Quotes About Narrative

Modern communication isn't about truth, it's about a resonant narrative. The myth about PR is that you will educate and inform people. No. The public wants to be told in a story who to like and who to hate.

Sometimes, fiction tells a truth that history cannot.

History is a succession of things that ought never to have happened, and the writing act is a kind of revenge against this.

What Djaout believed was that a lot of things can be taken away from us—even our lives—but not our stories about those lives. Eventually, no bullet will outlast the speed and velocity of language.

when theologians read the Bible through the lens of the Exodus narrative, they are called "liberation theologians," but their counterparts who read it through the Greco-Roman narrative are never labeled "domination theologians" or "colonization theologians." Similarly, we have "black theology" and "feminist theology," but Greco-Roman orthodoxy is never called "white theology" or "male theology.

And then he would tell me a story about a city that had come from another world, a city that was, in ways he either could not explain or which I could not understand, sentient. The beings in this city had once been like us.

But this is not that kind of story, the kind meant to explain things. It simply tells things as they are, and as you know there is no explanation for how things are, at least none that would make any difference and allow them to be something else.

It is not the literal past, the 'facts' of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language.

Every story is informed by a worldview.

Hearts and souls are moved by story and he who controls the cultural narrative controls the people.

The real revelation is that subversion of narrative is not a special technique used only by activists and intellectuals. It is the very nature of most storytelling through history. We are all creatures of our times seeking to control the narrative of our times, just as the ancients did. And those who control the cultural narrative, control the culture.

Their creation story bothered Uriel the most. In their narrative, the Anunnaki created mankind to be slaves of the gods, and bear the yoke of their labors, to mine their precious elements and build their holy kingdoms. Clay was mixed with the flesh of a god and then spat upon and mankind was birthed. So Elohim's purpose of male and female created in his image to rule over creation was displaced with an opposite narrative, one that carried an irony not lost on Uriel:

As Caleb got caught up into his descriptions they turned more into a narrative as if they were right there in the tent watching it all. "Eleazer opens that curtain with trembling hands, protected by his incense, to stand before the ark of the covenant. The ark is about three and a half feet long by two feet wide and high, and made of acacia wood overlaid with finely crafted gold.

the story Lilith told us about being the first wife and daughters of Adam?" "Lies from the pit of Sheol," said Diya. "That She-demon knew that the best lie is patterned after the truth. You conquer a people by conquering their narrative — subverting it. It has been her goal all along to control the world.

Talking with friends about books harks back to the original impulse behind storytelling, the forging of human bonds. We have told ourselves stories not just, in Joan Didion's phrase, in order to live, but in order to live with one another.

Wish not for treasure you can hold, No gleaming jewels, bright and cold, For finer still than pearl or gold, The treasure of a tale well told...

It is our responsibility to keep telling these tales--to tell them in a way that they teach and entertain and give meaning to our lives,' he [Jim] said later. 'This is not merely an obligation, it's something we must do because we love doing it.

Next, Lucas began inserting his names and places into a short narrative, not much more than a story fragment, called "The Journal of the Whills." He envisioned borrowing a storytelling device from the old Disney cartoons, showing a storybook—in this case the Journal of the Whills—"falling

A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett, of the State of Tennessee (1834).

You don't need any expert's permission to write your story, your way.

is boring to most people. Nothing happens. On the other end of the spectrum is the story that uses characters who are simply buffeted around by the story. Things happen to them, and character and

IRVING: Flowery prose. Verbosity. Some folks think they're Neil Gaiman, and have ambitions of their scripts being reprinted for their adoring fans to pore over, when in reality, scripts are working documents designed to provide the narrative framework for their collaborators to decorate and embellish with imagery.

It is the same old story. Night owns the copyright

You can make up your own story when you look at a photo.