Quotes About Narrative

A lot of people are not interested in stories in which they don't see themselves.

I'm not interested in someone's credits. Let me see who you are, and tell me a story of your life.

I mean, putting women in the center of a movie and not talking about men, that's already political, right?

And by the way, I wanted to point out that Kindred is not science fiction. You'll note there's no science in it. It's a kind of grim fantasy.

I just want to make stories. They don't have to have a moral or a reason. There might be some mild cautionary notes, but they're not moral. They don't impart any Judeo-Christian ethic of any kind.

My first narrative films developed out of a documentary process - finding someone who was willing to be filmed, watching, listening, taking copious notes and many hours of video footage.

The key to performing a song isn't always about hitting the right notes, but about telling a story.

I noticed that in 'The Revenant,' as much as it is a good story of revenge and endurance, there are times that you get to escape with a story like that.

I noticed that mainstream western TV channels, especially CNN and ABC, show the same thing.

I haven't worked on a lot of different shows, but from just watching different shows I've noticed that there isn't necessarily on every show that love of crafting an episode that has the three part act structure that comes around and actually tells a complete story.

Autobiography is a genre notorious for falsehood.

A memoir is always the most authentic telling of a situation, but a novel gets to different places.

I always try to create conflict and drama in my books; it's the engine of the novel.

There is no bigger crime, in the English comic novel, than thinking you are right.

The short story can't really hold an interesting event. It can't hold a death or a war or a loss of great magnitude the way either a long story or a novel can.

The 'interactive fiction' format hasn't changed in any fundamental way since the early 1970s, in the same way that the format of the novel hasn't since 1700.

It's hard being a hostage in somebody else's mouth - or a character in somebody else's novel.

And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you.

You know, the point of a novel - or to me, the point of a novel, the gift of a novel is to go really deeply inside people's lives and inside their personal experiences.

Comics seldom move me the way I would be moved by a novel or movie.

A novel with a bad middle is a bad book. A bad ending is something I've just gotten in the habit of forgiving.

The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.

I'm a novelist, so I can't write about ideas unless they're attached to people.

I've always wanted to be a novelist, so I just try to write really great narrative.