Quotes About Narrative

I wonder what it is that the people who criticize me for telling this story truly object to: is it that I have dared to tell the story? Or that the story turns out not to be the one they wanted to hear?

On the one hand I wonder, Was this really my story to tell? On the other hand, I just wanted the story to be told. But the truth is that I didn't think anybody was going to read it.

Autobiography is awfully seductive; it's wonderful. Once I got into it, I realized I was following a tradition established by Frederick Douglass - the slave narrative - speaking in the first-person singular, talking about the first-person plural, always saying 'I,' meaning 'we.'

It is important to tell good stories. You can tell stories even if they are not huge, epic, and wonderful. You can still take the responsibility for being a scribe of your tribe.

Listen to other people tell their story, but don't believe them. You know that it's just a story that is only true for them, but listen because the communication can be wonderful.

It's a wonderful narrative device to bring someone from the outside and look through his eyes if you want to describe the absurdity and preposterous reality that is accepted amongst the ones who are inside.

Most of what we say about ourselves is a wonderful piece of storytelling.

I usually dislike second books in series. The only second installment I ever loved was 'The Empire Strikes Back,' and I think that was wonderful because it evolved the characters while not seeming like a bridge.

With the transcendent or supernatural, they help us contextualize our own lives while we are here on this earth. On a narrative level, as a storyteller, they are a wonderful tool and technique by which to explore those hopes, those fears, those existential dilemmas that we all face from time to time.

I'm so bored of reading scripts with these wonderfully complex male roles, yet the woman character just sits on the bed waiting for him to come home.

The pleasure of reading a story and wondering what will come next for the hero is a pleasure that has lasted for centuries and, I think, will always be with us.

Characterisation is more important to me than the script. A decent story and extraordinary characters can do wonders for a film, but you cannot do it the other way around.

A bad historian is even more dangerous than dead documentary wood.

I am very lucky that I get to tell stories for a living. I love being able to grab people's attention, to keep them turning the pages, to make them stay awake all night. I want to stir the pulse, yes, but also to stir the heart. I hope 'The Woods' does that.

New York in a way functions as another character within the story, as it does within most of Woody Allen's stories.

What I think of as 'freakonomics' is mostly storytelling around an idea - not a theme but an idea. I like ideas much more than themes. Themes are boring. Themes are, 'Wool is back,' but ideas are, 'Why is wool back?'

When people see my show, they may not laugh out loud as they do with some of the classic comedians, but they do enjoy it. I regret that I called it comedy to begin with; I should have called it 'An Evening With' or put it down as spoken word. But the emphasis is always on funny stories.

Nothing ever begins. There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any other story springs.

I don't like the word 'abstractions' very much because most people don't think in abstractions. That is too difficult for them. They think in stories. And the best stories are not abstract; they are concrete.

As a cinematographer, I was always attracted to stories that have the potential to be told with as few words as possible.

I write short, my words tight to the thread of the narrative.

There's something about that puritanical narrative of progress and upward mobility and work ethic that the glorification of abstinence fits pretty neatly into. That pairs with the fact that 12-step recovery has had too large a monopoly on how treatment is understood in America.

You'll work hard to create characters that are compelling and unforgettable. But in the end, it's the story that matters.

I saw my dad work hard and then would see and know his interest and intentions, and that wasn't necessarily the narrative you would see in the press.