Quotes About Narrative

Our first invention was the story.

La gente que sabe contar historias siempre tiene compañía.

History texts say much about spinning bees and boycotts—but why so little about women being looted, raped, widowed, and left homeless?94

When we focus on those few women who fought in the war, and when we further mythologize their deeds, we inadvertently downgrade the real lives of the mass of women who did not raise arms but who still played active and important roles in the Revolutionary War.

Yet patriot masters apparently felt the need to fabricate such arguments, if only to relieve their own consciences. Understandably, they preferred to envision themselves as purveyors of freedom, the British as engineers of slavery. But it wasn't true, and the slaves undoubtedly knew this.

Autobiography is the poor man's history.

I don't write fantasy; I write historical novels about an imaginary place.

Plots are for dead people.

Unlike the physiological emotions of animals, our feelings are forever articulating themselves, making sense of themselves, narrating themselves, appealing to moral and other expectations, and rights and wrongs, and possibilities and impossibilities, to uphold or question themselves. They are often normative, as in the case of the anger felt at an injustice.

If the characters are not alive to me, it doesn't matter how good the sentences are. It just becomes all cake and no frosting.

I also know what looks good before the camera, how to move the camera, and how to get a story on the screen.

We don't tell Canadian stories enough.

Many candidates use a political autobiography to sell their candidacy.

We must be capable of writing our own history.

After we map out all the main characters' individual arcs, using color-coded index cards, we arrange them by episode and get a rough idea of the scene order.

Cliffhangers are a lot of fun, but I think they can be easily abused if you're not careful.

Unless the story line carries the scenes, the scenes don't really mean anything.

I think in most cases, when you're writing a song, you're just making up a little story, and you're not really thinking about making a point one way or another about it. You're just coming up with a little scenario and seeing it through, and that's it.

I've been asked what differentiates war literature as a category, and I don't think there is anything.

Killing characters on television has become an easy short cut to cathartic emotion.

I feel like, as a celebrity, I have a responsibility to tell important stories.

I seem to enjoy telling stories with a central absence, with a lacuna tunnelled into them.

A story is ultimately a memory. It's important when you're telling a story to think about why this memory is a memory. You don't remember everything in life; you just remember certain things - so, why this one?

We start with strong characters and build the movie from there. That not to say we don't struggle with story - that's the most challenging part.