Quotes About Narrative

La sete di storie diminuiva se si poteva viverne una?

That was the trouble with writing, there were such an infinite number of turns the story could take. How were you to know which one was right?

First, something basic: a storyteller never writes down everything he knows about his characters. There's no need for readers to know everything. Some of it is better kept secret between the author and his creations.

Some come here to wait for death, others for life to begin at last, others again live only on the stories they are told.

Wake up, Dustfinger!" it said. "Come Back. The story isn't over yet.

They were here already, all of them: Dustfinger and Capricorn, Basra and Roxane, Minerva, Violante, the Adderhead...you merely wrote their story, but they didn't like it, and now they're writing it for themselves.

And then her voice could help this story to find a good ending at last.

Look, there are as many walkaway philosophies as there are walkaways, but mine is, 'the stories you tell come true.' If you believe everyone is untrustworthy, you'll build that into your systems so that even the best people have to act like the worst people to get anything done. If you assume people are okay, you live a much happier life.

Finally, one would have to put all this information together to shape a continuum, a narrative in which the House of Bush and the House of Saud dominated the world stage together in one era after another. Having done so, one would come to a singular inescapable conclusion: namely, that, horrifying as it sounds, the secret relationship between these two great families helped to trigger the Age of Terror and give rise to the tragedy of 9/11.

You do have to listen to the stories, for stories always mean something. The question that worries me is: WHAT exactly do they mean?

Notice how the crucible of the story changes those who listen to it, those who are within it, and the person who is telling it, all at the same time.

If I was living in a happier place, said Eggingarde, I might tell stories with happier endings.

Strange how a story sometimes seems to end just how it started, in a circle.

This is the problem with stories. Stories always mean something. The question is ... What exactly do they mean?

History is a ghost story.

The war that killed my grandfather and great-uncles and thousands of other blacks is only a footnote in our history books.

Wasn't that what all stories said?You felt it, like a pang in your heart, when something was happening to someone you love

After I'd told her – the mall, the taxi, Cross stroking my hair – she said, 'Did he kiss you?' 'John and Martin totally would have seen that,' I said, and as I felt myself implying the circumstances had prevented our kissing, I thought maybe this was why you told stories to other people – for how their possibilities enlarged in the retelling.

But I should note, for all my resistance to organized religion, that I don't believe Charlie could have quit drinking without it. It provided him with a way to structure his behavior, and a way to explain that behavior, both past and present, to himself. Perhaps fiction has, for me, served a similar purpose--what is a narrative arc if not the imposition of order on disparate events? -- and perhaps it is my avid reading that has been my faith all along.

It would in retrospect appear to be a stop on a narrative path that was inevitable, but this is only because most events, most paths, feel inevitable in retrospect.

A dystopian story must not merely be dystopian; it must also be a story. Premise can only get you so far.

Perhaps fiction has, for me, served a similar purpose—what is a narrative arc if not the imposition of order on disparate events?—and perhaps it is my avid reading that has been my faith all along.

The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.

Never trust the teller, trust the tale.