Quotes About Narrative

Everyone's life is an unfolding story, and all stories have good guys and bad guys, and all stories have conflicts and resolutions, and all stories--if they are interesting--have drama.

If you know haw a book is going to end, would you read it in the first place?" Kit asked herself later, as she stood in the bathroom, an electric toothbrush winding its way around her mouth. "Do you stop reading a book because you don't want to watch the characters you like turn out to be unlikable, or the ones with which you identify denied the happy ending you believe they deserve?

Just, that we read fiction because it suggests that life has a shape, and we feel . . . consoled, I think he said, by that notion. Consoled to think that life isn't just one damned thing after another. That it has sequence and consequence." She smiled at Edith. "I think it was more or less the idea that fictional narrative made life seem to matter, that it pushed away the meaninglessness of death.

Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here.

A populist is, basically, a gifted story teller; someone who can tell a false story well. And the way to fight them is by telling a true story better.

History is His story. You haven't heard my story.

Research suggests that people rarely change their minds or form a new worldview based on facts or data alone; it is through stories (and the values systems embedded within them) that we come to reinterpret the world and develop empathy and compassion for others.

I love the breadth and space you get to explore character in so-called serialized TV, the novelistic element of maybe being able to find out who people are. But I also very much like the sitcom discipline of having a self-contained episode that you could conceivably, I hope, be able to enjoy in and of itself.

'Criminal Intent' scripts are very good. Like others involved in 'Law & Order' stuff, I've come to appreciate the lack of 'soap,' if you will. The story dominates. You don't spend a lot of time with the psychological underpinnings of the police.

Having the games on TV, I've always believed it's like watching a soap opera - fans can't wait for the next episode.

In a movie, you work three months to tell a story that happens in two hours. In a Mexican soap opera, you work one day to make a story that's an hour and a half. So you can see the difference in the quality of the project.

I think that baseball games are like soap operas. If you watch five in a row, you know enough to get hooked.

I have always believed that cinema is one of the greatest instruments of positive social change. Stories can be light, engaging and poignant, but they need to say something.

It is possible to assemble a narrative for yourself, brokenly, on social media, only seeing what you want to look at.

To share a story is in part to take ownership of it, especially because you are often able to comment on a story that you are sharing on social media.

When we embraced social media, we took more control of the Newark narrative. We increased responsiveness toward residents. We drew more of our constituents in to participate in government and improve our cities.

When you make movies, you have to be preoccupied with the social problems, otherwise there is no point in making a movie. To have a story, you need a social problem. Not necessarily a problem, but something to get the idea for a story, otherwise there's no story.

Our identities really are a constant negotiation between the story we tell about ourselves and the narrative our societies like to recite.

Authors can only soft sell the environment. Create a wonderful story around the environment involving the characters that leaves a lasting impression on the reader's mind.

I love games, and I feel they've been sold short shrift in films so far.

I feel like I can't be sick without some story being made up or some photos being sold a month later.

Stories have a special way of putting us inside the people, inside the boots of the soldiers. You're absorbed in a way a documentary or nonfiction can't do for you.

Miracles aren't necessarily good for everyone. The parting of the Red Sea, great for the Jews, not so hot for the Egyptian soldiers.

Though there might not be any easy answers to the problem of poverty, its most compelling scribes do not resign themselves to representation solely for the sake of those age-old verities of truth and beauty.