Quotes About Narrative

Memories can be treacherous. We all have a hunger to rearrange our histories so as to remember ourselves in the most flattering light.

Maybe if they didn't tell you the stories ... they'd actually go out and do it.

That's a whole other story.' 'Is it?' Gentle replied. 'Or is it all one?

He believed that our life-stories are ours to construct as we wish,within or even against the constraints posed by the real world...

A nation is bound not only by the real past, but the stories it tells itself: by what it remembers, and what it forgets.

Mark Spitz didn't ask about Harry. You never asked about the characters that disappeared from a Last Night story. You knew the answer. The plague had a knack for narrative closure.

No slave had ever keeled over dead at a spinning wheel or been butchered for a tangle. But nobody wanted to speak on the true disposition of the world. And no one wanted to hear it.

Who knew the havoc and ruin they'd perpetrate if allowed to run free among decent people. Best to keep them all in here, on this island, bought for twenty-seven bucks from the Indians, the story went. Twenty-seven bucks went a lot further in those days.

Things in life have no real beginning, though our stories about them always do.

Literature can remind us that not all ife is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.

Once upon a time and long ago, in fact so long ago that I couldn't have been there, and I wasn't there, but I'll tell you anyways: once upon a time and long ago...

There isn't a story in the world that isn't in part, at least, addressed to the past.

So many people considered Rami a traitor, a lackey, a turncoat, but in the end he didn't care: he knew what he was doing, he knew he was getting under their skin, he was peeling it back, exposing the rawness. He was outnumbered, yes, but they would find a tipping point sometime, somewhere, along the way. It was inevitable. He had to keep telling the story. Repeating it again and again and again.

Stories matter. They send our kids to war. They open up our pockets. They break our hearts.

They have a deep need just to talk, just to tell a story, however small or reckless.

A good moral education addresses both the cognitive and affective dimensions of human nature. Stories are an irreplaceable medium for this kind of moral education—that is, the education of character. The

The deep truths of a good story, especially fairy tales, cannot be revealed through discursive analysis—otherwise, why tell the story?

Kami benci kalau harus bercerita tentang pengalaman kami. Tidak ada penjelasan yang perlu diberikan untuk mereka yang pernah menjalaninya, dan mereka yang tidak langsung merasakannya tidak akan pernah memahami bagaimana perasaan kami saat itu dan perasaan kami sekarang.

As we shape our stories, we shape ourselves.

I detest the masculine point of view. I am bored by his heroism, virtue, and honour. I think the best these men can do is not talk about themselves anymore.

Nothing has really happened unless it's been described [in words].

Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact.

When you asked me to speak about women and fiction I sat down on the banks of a river and began to wonder what the words meant. They might mean simply a few remarks about Fanny Burney; a few more about Jane Austen; a tribute to the Brontes and a sketch of Haworth Parsonage under snow, some witticisms if possible about Miss Mitford; a respectful allusion to George Eliot; a reference to Mrs Gaskell and one would have done.

Alone, over my dead fire, I tend to see the thin places in my own stories.