Quotes About Narrative

We invented a history of Poland as a tolerant, open country, a country that has not been tainted by any atrocities committed against its minorities.

I don't think there's a subject matter that can't absorb 3-D; that can't tolerate the addition of depth as a storytelling technique.

Tolkien is as good as Dickens at sketching a scene.

Every story takes its toll on me and leaves an impression on me.

With 'Noontide Toll', I wanted to cater to a single story but also collectively more than a single story.

A great thing is happening on cable TV. You see characters change in stories over years, like in Tolstoy. That's a whole, thrilling new form that I really enjoy. They are Tolstoy-an in their endless character development and narrative changes... a show like 'Breaking Bad' is astonishing.

Every drama requires a cast. The cast may be so huge, as in Leo Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina,' that the author or editor provides a list of characters to keep them straight. Or it may be an intimate cast of two.

I don't believe that my first name is Leo or that my last name is Tolstoy. I'm a storyteller.

I always like story songs, Dolly Parton, Tom T. Hall, Mel Tillis, Red Stegall, when they'd do their story songs. I was totally enthralled.

Wars, plagues, names upon tombs tell us only what happened. But history lies in the cracks in between. In the inexplicable, invisible turns and decisions. A person saying no instead of yes. …It is not that they had lived…but how.

What if a place could remember what had happened? What if a place could speak? What if that memory tripped us up in our daily lives?

The trouble with real life is that you don't know whether you're the hero or just some nice chap who gets bumped off in chapter five to show what a rotter the villain is without anyone minding too much.

My story? How can that be relevant? There's not much to tell." "Every person has a story. And every story is important.

After a friend dies young, the story of her life becomes the exposition to a tragedy. This is the central problem of biography.

So what happens next?' 'Everybody dies, and the people who don't get married.' 'Like any other story, then.'

When diseases and stories are chronic, doctors and writers often both run for the hills

Narrative is an accumulation of knowledge about the future. We begin in the present and end in the present, and in the middle is an accumulation of future possibilities

As Will Burton says, "pain has a story, a narrative," and knowing it reveals human complexity which is an invitation to decency. When we try to understand, we discover causes, origins, and consequences about each other and our selves.

We often leave out experiences or information that doesn't fit with the incomplete picture or story we have been telling ourselves. If we only see the challenges, we won't have anywhere to add new positive experiences—and they will disappear before they have room to take root and grow.

I realised that when someone plays hard to get, they are making themselves into a character in a story, and they choose the story that leads to the outcome they want.

We should have stories not to tell us how to live and turn our lives into copies of stories, but to prevent us from having to fictionalise ourselves".

we need to learn to tell the story that makes sense of Jesus. Not a story that we ask Jesus to fit into.

That is, until we find the story that leads us to the gospel claim that Jesus is the Messiah, we don't have the Bible's story right.

It is impossible for us to indwell this Story and not assume that narrative's perspective. Again, that perspective is God's perspective. It is not our perspective; it is God's perspective. It is God's perspective on us, not our perspective on others.