Quotes About Narrative

OUR ISLAND STORY

History is always entirely different to what has happened.

The difference between a novelist and a historian is this: that the former tells lies deliberately and for the fun of it; the historian tells lies and imagines he is telling the truth.

Surely you know that pleasure soon evaporates, into thin air? Then all we are left with are stories.

He was, after all, just a man. And not merely a narrative.

Nobody is the author or producer of his own life story ... somebody began it and is its subject in the twofold sense, namely, its actor and sufferer ... but nobody is the author ...

No philosophy, no analysis, no aphorism, be it ever so profound, can compare in intensity and richness of meaning with a properly narrated story.

The holes of oblivion do not exist. Nothing human is that perfect, and there are simply too many people in the world to make oblivion possible. One man will always be left alive to tell the story.

Ninguna filosofía, análisis o aforismo, por profundo que sea, puede compararse en intensidad y riqueza de significado con una historia bien narrada.

A human life is a story told by God.

Los cuentos son para dormir a los niños y despertar a los adultos.

Oh, you've made plenty of short stories long. But never, ever, have you made a long story short.

Most religious people don't believe the dogma, Ash. We take from it what we want, we discard what we don't. We form whatever narrative we like—kind God, vengeful God, active God, laid-back God, whatever. We just make sure we get something out of it. Maybe we get life everlasting while people we resent burn for eternity. Maybe we get something more concrete—money, a job, friends. You just change the narrative.

We pay attention to what works with our narrative. We tend to dismiss that which does not.

We are all masters of self-rationalization. We all seek ways to justify our narrative. We all twist that narrative to make ourselves more sympathetic. You do it too.

I remember, growing up as a kid, history class was very washed-over. They didn't really get into the gritty bits of slavery. It's a very, very small section in the history books. It's not something they really touch on directly with American curriculums.

Sometimes, I have themes that interest me or that touch on larger issues but, really, I'm just trying to figure out the plot, or how the characters work. I'm trying to make the best story I possibly can.

I think noir is an immensely powerful - and elastic - lens through which to look at narrative and character. It seems to access something dark and true in us that other modes of fiction are often a bit prissy about touching. But the key to making it work as time and culture moves on is to use the elasticity, not just the power.

I think that's what we like to explore and see on TV these days especially in long form, is complicated people who have to make tough decisions.

It's a tough job to tell a story when the audience already knows the ending, and the ending is bleak.

For me, making a mass film is tougher. A lot of things needed to be intertwined into a two-hour narrative without getting too complicated.

A. S. Byatt is a writer in mid-career whose time has certainly come, because 'Possession' is a tour de force that opens every narrative device of English fiction to inspection without, for a moment, ceasing to delight.

Normally, when I write a tour show, it's got a title that means something - a beginning, a middle and an end - and some kind of storyline and ideas going through it over two hours.

The Masters isn't about Jim Nantz and his storytelling. It's about golf's greatest tournament.