Quotes About Narrative

I'm so tired of stories starting, 'Maud Jones was walking her dog down Broadway.' You've got to go over to the back page somewhere to finally find out the damn dog was run over by a truck. Get the thing told, for heaven's sake. Everybody doesn't have to be an O. Henry.

If the right idea comes up, and it feels true to talk about somebody being in a truck, and that's the only way to tell the story, then I will reluctantly tell the story that way.

Some stories are true that never happened.

I'm a true believer in story. I think when you just tell people to think, people tend to get resistant and defensive and feel like you're accusing them of not thinking.

If there was one overarching theme to 'True Detective,' I would say it was that, as human beings, we are nothing but the stories we live and die by - so you'd better be careful what stories you tell yourself.

Definitely, 'True Detective' was a great example of one director, one story. It worked fantastically well. Well, I thought it worked fantastically well; I know a lot people didn't.

At one point in the 'Onyx Court' series, I think during 'In Ashes Lie', I suggested that Lune might come to love someone else eventually. Which was me pushing back against the narrative trope that people only get one True Love in their entire lives - an idea I think is kind of pernicious - but in retrospect, I wish I hadn't done it there.

It's hard to live in a blind and aimless - or dishonest, rather - narrative when somebody in your family is going farther toward - or at least think they are and say they are - their true self.

All fiction is based on truth - 'Madame Bovary' is based on a true story!

You don't have to have a true story to make a true story movie.

My responsibility is to try to tell true stories. To me a true story is always hopeful, but never simply, uncomplicatedly happy.

The architecture of a story can be a little bit different if it's a true story.

It's hard when you're doing a film based on a true story to really figure out what all those relationships were.

The way I write, I need to tell the true story. I can't just make a story up. So I have to let the things happen to me and allow myself to work through my thoughts.

Truth may be stranger than fiction on a plot and narrative basis, but fiction can investigate tone in a way that things based on a true story can't.

Fiction has consisted either of placing imaginary characters in a true story, which is the Iliad, or of presenting the story of an individual as having a general historical value, which is the Odyssey.

Whenever you write a true story, it's not going to go over 100 percent well with everybody.

If a film is based on a true story and you don't use anyone's name, you can do what you like.

Every time you do a true story - and I've done a few - you have to look in the mirror and say, 'That's close enough. I'm comfortable with this.' You're always going to compress time; you're going to change the order of things. But I don't think you want to tell a big lie. You want to think that you're embracing the truth.

All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened.

You don't necessarily need a script or actors to tell a compelling tale. Finding a person at a key moment in his life and rendering the truth as you see it - that's the truest form of drama.

With 'Luke Cage,' we all, as a collective wanted to tell the truest story that we could but, at the same time, also be very true to the comic book genre.

I feel like I've kinda danced around telling the truest story I can for many years of my life. I've been a little distracted by trying to be shocking or edgy or cool or whatever, and by letting go of that and telling the truest story I can - even if it's about aliens and talking raccoons - it works.

Back in the 1980s, state-of-the-nation fictions were all set in Manhattan. Now, they're all in Trump country. Early in 'S-Town,' we're introduced to an actual maze, every branch of which leads to a further junction. This may also be a metaphor.