Quotes About Narrative

If someone rescues you, they own you. Not because you owe them—you can sort that, with enough good favors or bottles of booze dressed up in ribbons. They own you because you're not the lead in your story any more. You're the poor struggling loser/helpless damsel/plucky sidekick who was saved from danger/dishonor/humiliation by the brilliant brave compassionate hero/heroine, and they get to decide which, because you're not the one running this story, not any more.

this is the only story in the world that nobody but me will ever be able to tell.

For a supposedly sacred, infallible text, it reads a lot like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel.

m'a interrogée à maintes reprises sur ces brefs passages, étant donné qu'ils proviennent d'une voix narrative tout à fait différente de celle du reste des livres dans cette série sur les sœurs Aldridge. Les lecteurs curieux veulent avant tout en savoir plus sur les derniers instants de la vie de Flo Aldridge. Qui était-elle ? Qu'est-ce qui l'a

We withdraw from our experience of the present moment. We pull away from the raw feelings of fear and shame by incessantly telling ourselves stories about what is happening in our life.

When we get lost in our stories, we lose touch with our actual experience.

I knew now there was no such thing as a biblioblackhole. Everything written truly lived. Every real word. Every real story. You had to find your words. You had to find your story.

is out, as it always must come in the end, The delicious story is ripe to tell to the intimate friend;

Although Hermione is right about a great many things, she was wrong about the nature of things gone by. this is what I have come to know: Our past is never passed and there is no such thing as moving on. but there is this telling and there is such a thing as passing through.

Kodak commercials say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but the one they showed of Rodney ain't worth more than three or four. Boy. Black.

Right now each of us is a private oral culture. We rewrite our pasts to suit our needs and support the story we tell about ourselves. With our memories we are all guilty of a Whig interpretation of our personal histories, seeing our former selves as steps toward our glorious present selves.

If our lives are tales that Allah tells, then we are the audience as well as the players, and it is by living these tales that we receive their lessons.

I remembered that argument as being a turning point for me. I had imagined a narrative of redemption and self-improvement in which I was the heroic single father, rising to meet the challenge. But the reality was…what? How much of what had happened since then could I take credit for?

Anthropologists will tell you that oral cultures understand the past differently; for them, their histories don't need to be accurate so much as they need to validate the community's understanding of itself. So it wouldn't be correct to say that their histories are unreliable; their histories do what they need to do.

Well if you already know how the story goes, why do you need me to read it to you' 'Cause I wanna hear it!

People are made of stories. Our memories are not the impartial accumulation of every second we've lived; they're the narrative that we assembled out of selected moments

People are made of stories

It seemed to me that a perfect memory couldn't be a narrative any more than unedited security-cam footage could be a feature film.

words differently each time he told it; he was skilled enough as a storyteller that the arrangement of words didn't matter. It was different for Moseby, who never acted anything out when he gave his sermons; for him, the words were what was important. Jijingi realized that Moseby wrote down his sermons not because his memory was terrible but because he was looking for a specific arrangement of words. Once he found the one he wanted, he could hold on to it for as long as he needed.

La gente está hecha de historias. Nuestros recuerdos no son la acumulación imparcial de cada uno de los segundos que hemos vivido; son la narrativa que hemos ensamblado a partir de momentos escogidos. Y es por eso que, aun cuando hayamos experimentados los mismos acontecimientos que otros individuos, nunca construiremos narrativas idénticas: los criterios empleados para seleccionar momentos son distintos para cada cual, y un reflejo de nuestras personalidades.

actual events were more complicated and less dramatic, as actual events always are, so I have taken liberties to make a better narrative. I've told a story in order to make a case for the truth. I recognize the contradiction here.

perfect memory couldn't be a narrative any more than unedited security-cam footage could be a feature film.

required for good fiction: character, conflict, change through time. And if you're really blessed, you get resolution. But life doesn't usually work out that way.

The telling room is, in Spanish, known as 'el contador.'