Quotes About Narrative

Change your story, change your life. Divorce the story of limitation and marry the story of the truth, and everything changes.

What had passed between Eleanor Harding and Mary Bold need not be told. It is indeed a matter of thankfulness that neither the historian nor the novelist hears all that is said by their heroes or heroines, or how would three volumes or twenty suffice!

The writer of stories must please, or he will be nothing. And he must teach whether he wish to teach or no. How

It was admitted by all her friends, and also by her enemies, — who were in truth the more numerous and active body of the two, — that Lizzie Greystock had done very well with herself. We will tell the story of Lizzie Greystock from the beginning, but we will not dwell over it at great length, as we might do if we loved her.

The real heroine, if it be found possible to arrange her drapery for her becomingly, and to put that part which she enacted into properly heroic words, shall stalk in among us at some considerably later period of the narrative, when the writer shall have accustomed himself to the flow of words, and have worked himself up to a state of mind fit for the reception of noble acting and noble speaking.

Lord George Gordon's own Narrative of these tumultuous events is not marked by any regrets: this, despite the colossal destruction and loss of life which had followed the presentation of the Petition which he had masterminded.

I've come to realize one thing, that stories are always bigger than we are, they happen to us and we are their protagonists without realizing it, but in the stories we live, we aren't the true protagonists, the true protagonist is the story itself.

The more people we can find to agree with our side of the story, the more justified we will feel in believing that side of the story.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility. The story should never be made up of improbable incidents; there should be nothing of the sort in it.

The plot, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy; Character holds the second place.

By myth I mean the arrangement of the incidents

Every tragedy falls into two parts, — Complication and Unravelling or Denouement.

La historia cuenta lo que sucedió; la poesía lo que debía suceder.

A good novel rushes you forward like a skiff down a stream, and you arrive at the end, perhaps breathless, but unexhausted.

De schrijvers is natuurlijk de valsspeler bij uitstek. Hij maakt gebruik van middelen die anderen niet hebben. Zijn leven is een laboratorium waarin experimenten worden uitgevoerd ten behoeve van het vertellen van verhalen. Wat hem ook overkomt, hij kan altijd afstand nemen van zijn rampen, zijn tragedies, zijn mislukkingen, door erover te vertellen. Dat kunnen anderen niet altijd, niet op die manier, en dat maakt hem een valsspeler.

De schrijver is natuurlijk de valsspeler bij uitstek. Hij maakt gebruik van middelen die anderen niet hebben. Zijn leven is een laboratorium waarin experimenten worden uitgevoerd ten behoeve van het vertellen van verhalen. Wat hem ook overkomt, hij kan altijd afstand nemen van zijn rampen, zijn tragedies, zijn mislukkingen, door erover te vertellen. Dat kunnen anderen niet altijd, niet op die manier, en dat maakt hem een valsspeler.

Now, before you make a movie, you have to have a script, and before you have a script, you have to have a story; though some avant-garde directors have tried to dispense with the latter item, you'll find their work only at art theaters.

The world's history was a mass of such disconnected threads, and none could say which were important and which were trivial.

When Dr. Mortimer had finished reading this singular narrative he pushed his spectacles up on his forehead and stared across at Mr. Sherlock Holmes. The latter yawned and tossed the end of his cigarette into the fire. Well? said he. Do you not find it interesting? To a collector of fairy-tales.

I really think I shall commence chapter forty-four, he said, patting his hands together. I shall commence, I think, with a slight exaggeration and go on from there into an outright lie. Constance, my dear? Yes, Uncle Julian? I am going to say that my wife was a beautiful woman.

In the country of the story the writer is king.

I shall commence, I think, with a slight exaggeration and go on from there into an outright lie.

By changing the emphasis and angle on this little plot we can make it say almost anything we like. There is certainly no need to worry about whether any of this is true, or actually happened; it is as true as you make it. The important thing is that it be true in the story, and actually happen there.