Quotes About Narrative

what a shame that dreams are not the stuff that stories are made on.

Try to remember with description that you must never just let it lie there; nothing in your story should ever be static unless you have a very good reason indeed for keeping your reader still; the essence of the story is motion.

No soporto escribir temas autobiográficos porque si son aburridos, nadie debería leerlos, y si son interesnates, debería usarlos en una historia.

When I tell a story, I tell it when I want to tell it, not when you want to hear it.

Look, do me a favor! When I'm telling a story, don't read! It's a disgusting habit! You better listen to what I'm saying, for there's a new story beginning.

In drama, the characters should determine the story. In melodrama, the story determines the characters.

Uncertainty is as good a way as any to kill a story.

Losing the memory of the experience itself to the memory of writing about it. Like people whose memories of places they've traveled to are in fact only memories of the pictures they took there. In the end, writing and photography probably destroy more of the past than they ever preserve of it. So it could happen: by writing about someone lost—or even just talking too much about them—you might be burying them for good.

There's a certain kind of person who, having read this far, is anxiously wondering: Does something bad happen to the dog?

Only those who are writers, it seems, get to say what happened

There were too many twists & turns to this story, too many oddly shaped pieces to fit into this quilt.

He had spent his whole life listening to stories from the past and now he had his own, and it was slowly building chapter by chapter.

Moments recalled like friends. It was that way or another. We're fairly certain either way. Stories. They are with us. Time doesn't forsake. It doesn't soothe or decrease. Never.

Self-consciousness is not knowledge but a story one tells about oneself.

Je sais qu'on ne peut jamais se connaître, mais seulement se raconter.

one can never know oneself but only narrate oneself

Women's entire history has been written by men.

La bella storia che era la mia vita diventava falsa a mano a mano che me la raccontavo

Ma vie serait une belle histoire qui deviendrait vraie au fur et à mesure que je me la raconterais.

Every fairy-tale needs a good old-fashioned villain?

Make the matter even more terrible than the truth

It can be said that one slip of point of view by a writer can hurt a story badly, and several slips can be fatal.' Stein on Writing

be sure you don't stop the story while describing. You are a storyteller, not an interior decorator.

A writer who always has his characters "walk" is missing opportunities.