Quotes About Narrative

Where's the mileage in an autobiography? Anyone who writes one inevitably casts themselves as a hero, and I'm not about to do that.

Every team writes its own story.

Suspense arises naturally from good writing - it's not a spice to be added separately.

All autobiography is storytelling; all writing is autobiography.

For me, it's writing a book and telling people about this story.

My style of writing is to allow the story to unfold on its own. I try not to structure my work too rigidly.

Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory.

Writing the past is never a neutral act. Writing always asks the past to justify itself, to give its reasons... provided we can live with the reasons. What we want is a narrative, not a log; a tale, not a trial. This is why most people write memoirs using the conventions not of history, but of fiction.

Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may happily strike out his teeth.

Under every roof, a story, just as behind every brow, a history

We live in our tales of ourselves, she thought, and ignore as best we can the contradictions, and the lapses, and the abrasions of plot against our mortal souls...

You might forget a story, but you can never unhear a story.

We live in our tales of ourselves. . . and ignore as best we can the contradictions, and the lapses, and the abrasions of plot against our mortal souls. . .

Your life story is really about how the hands of history caught you up, played with you, and you with them. History plays for keeps; individuals play for time. When

The story is told in so many ways, depending on who is doing the telling, and what needs to be heard at the time.

Your life story is really about how the hands of history caught you up, played with you, and you with them. History plays for keeps. Individuals play for time.

Lo que pervive en la memoria de la gente es más verdadero que el arte de un poeta para contarlo. En la memoria popular, el mal siempre antecede al bien.

You might forget a story, but you can never unhear a story. By that token, you might forget an event, but you can never go back to living as you did before its hidden influence was applied upon you.

A lembrança da vida da gente se guarda em trechos diversos, cada um com seu signo e sentimento, uns com os outros acho que nem não misturam. Contar seguido, alinhavado, só mesmo sendo as coisas de rasa importância. De cada vivimento que eu real tive, de alegria forte ou pesar, cada vez daquela hoje vejo que eu era como se fosse diferente pessoa. Sucedido desgovernado. Assim eu acho, assim é que eu conto.

History has always existed, but not always in a historical form.

How we remember changes how we have lived. Time runs both ways. We make stories of our lives.

Only the victors have stories to tell. We, the vanquished, were all cowards and weaklings by then, whose memories, fears, and enthusiasms should not be remembered.

History tells us what people do; historical fiction helps us imagine how they felt.

In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative.