Quotes About Narrative

I wanted to do a book that was extremely suspicious of storytelling... it ("Embassytown") is very skeptical of the liberating potential of narrative. [I present] the idea that narrative may just as well be a shackle as [well] as a key.

People have wanted to narrate since first we banged rocks together & wondered about fire. There'll be tellings as long as there are any of us here, until the stars disappear one by one like turned-out lights.

In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.

If you don't like someone's story, write your own.

There is no story that is not true.

If you don't like my story,write your own

People create stories create people; or rather stories create people create stories.

Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.

The story's power, then, is twofold: It provides simulation (knowledge about how to act) and inspiration (motivation to act).

In the last few chapters, we've seen that a credible idea makes people believe. An emotional idea makes people care. And in this chapter we'll see that the right stories make people act.

Stories should put knowledge into a frame work that is more lifelike.

Mental simulation is not as good as actually doing something. But it's the next best thing. And the right kind of a story is a simulation.

Were the stories we told each other true? Who knows? At the best of times, a story is a slippery thing. Perhaps that was why it changed with each telling. Or is that the nature of all stories, the reason for their power?

Todas las historias tienen muchas versiones distintas. La versión elegida nos revela más acerca del narrador que acerca de la historia.

Write our story, too. For always we've been pushed into corners, trivialized, misunderstood, blamed, forgotten—or maligned and used as cautionary tales.

Away back in that time-in 1492-there was a man by the name of Columbus came from across the great ocean, and he discovered the country for the white man. . . What did he find when he first arrived here Did he find a white man standing on the continent then . . . I stood here first, and Columbus first discovered me.

No guts, no story.

The reason why I love people, and writing about them, is because they don't always respond with hate and anger. If they did I wouldn't have a story to tell. Who wants to know about someone who was brutalised and became brutal? I'm interested in the exceptions.

I could not stop talking because now I had started my story, it wanted to be finished. We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us.

We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us.

Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive .

Our stories are the tellers of us.

I did not want to tell her what happened, but I had to now. I could not stop talking because now I had started my story, it wanted to be finished. We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us.

Stories have a unique power, David. The Inuit believe they can capture souls.