Quotes About Narrative

I've been asked to write an autobiography, and I've started it a couple of times, on different angles, and maybe one day I will, but you know what? There's time for that because I'd like to have the whole story.

Don't get me started on Americans and war. One of the things I learnt over in Italy is how they mythologised the war so that it's all good old gung-ho guys from Omaha and ignored everyone else's role.

A lot of times as writers, you want to come up with the best possible story, and you bend it according to what you want to happen. I think one of the things that I always try to think about is what would really happen in a situation, what feels real.

I think, when I write, one of the things that I'm really attempting to do is I'm attempting to humanize my characters.

Keep everything in context, and try to have each line doing more than one thing - not just giving exposition but also revealing character and history, etc.

The things we always disengage with are one-sided stories or one-sided characters. They're very boring. When you feel like you're being hit over the head, you disengage.

After adolescence, if one's life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes.

Every book in the 'Dreams' cycle dramatizes a particular epoch in the ongoing cultural collision between North America's native peoples and its European colonizers.

Once you become the story off-screen, you are less likely to be the onscreen one.

There's something about getting onstage in a play where the actor tells the story, beginning, middle, and end, the way they want to tell it. For me, it's the most powerful place to be, and it's the most empowering place to be.

Every beginning is only a sequel, after all, and the book of events is always open halfway through.

Great stories start with great opening lines. 'I'm a lineman for the county' - what a great way to start a song.

With the dramatic canvas, I found you could still operate with the documentarist's observational eye.

I remember how my world expanded in amazing fashion by that magical operation of translating words into images, and images into stories.

In most science-fiction pictures, the black guy is either an engineer or a radio operator, and he is the first guy killed - gone from the movie.

In my opinion, an album has a story from start to finish and has a concrete concept.

I don't like novels that end happily. They depress me so much.

Every good story-teller nowadays starts with the end, and then goes on to the beginning, and concludes with the middle...

Then you are quite behind the age," said the Water-rat.  "Every good story-teller nowadays starts with the end, and then goes on to the beginning, and concludes with the middle. 

I never feel really comfortable unless I am either actually writing or have a story going. I could not stop writing.

It was a fine cow, as cows go, but, like so many cows, it lacked sustained dramatic interest.

I don't know if you have had the same experience, but the snag I always come up against when I'm telling a story is this dashed difficult problem of where to begin it.

I went into the kitchen ten minutes back. The cat was sitting on the mat. Beale's narrative style closely resembled that of a certain book I had read in my infancy. I wish I could remember its title. It was a well-written book.

Ognuno ha una favola dentro che non riesce a leggere da solo. Ha bisogno di qualcuno che con la meraviglia e l'incanto negli occhi, la legga e gliela racconti.