Quotes About Narrative

My work is focused on using data to tell stories and explore our common humanity.

The old handbook on writing is 'Write what you know.' I come from an autobiographical starting place almost all of the time, but it would be a mistake to presume that I'm not using fiction to extend the narrative.

'Two' is not written in the usual style of a novel. It's a straightforward, linear narrative of my times, as I observed partition, and is told through multiple characters.

If you actually succeed in creating a utopia, you've created a world without conflict, in which everything is perfect. And if there's no conflict, there are no stories worth telling - or reading!

I had written two or three books before my husband noticed that in every one of them a family member was missing. He suggested that it was because my father's death, when I was five, utterly changed my world. I can only suppose he is right and that this is the reason I am drawn to a narrative where someone's life is changed by loss.

Actors can be many things - vain, venal, self-serving, obnoxious, bullies - but all of the good ones are great storytellers.

Just as divine authority was legitimised by religious mythologies and human authority was legitimised by humanist ideologies, so high-tech gurus and Silicon Valley prophets are creating a new universal narrative that legitimises the authority of algorithms and Big Data.

We are not generally included in that narrative - people of color - definitely, women of color don't normally fit that narrative that has been built around the whole image and the whole story of the Silicon Valley.

'Happy Valley' is an extraordinary piece and it was not necessarily about Catherine but her part in the narrative.

A novel takes place over time. It's a historical narrative, and it needs to have a series of peaks and valleys and the move through. You can't just start at the highest pitch and stay there, but you can in a lyric poem.

There's a reason a happy ending is called an ending. The trick of a television storyteller is to find all the rivers and mountains and valleys on the way to that ending.

What's so valuable about HBO is they tell stories. We learn from stories.

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.

I don't mind UFO's and ghost stories, it's just that I tend to give value to the storyteller rather than to the story itself.

I think there is a real value in an editorial point-of-view and in editorial curation, and in putting together an entire narrative around a set of topics is important.

I think there's still a lot of room in 'Riverdale' for that. Asexuality is not one of those things, in my research, that is so understood at face value, and I think maybe the development of that narrative could also be something very interesting and very unique and still resonate with people and not step on anyone's toes.

Films don't always tell a story; some films can achieve effect just by being razzle-dazzle or rock n' roll. That's part of the fare that's out there. And that's okay. For me, I place more value on a story.

I feel like all my films have my politics. As a film-maker, whatever story you're telling, your value system comes out.

He talked in curlicues and long, winding metaphors. I started out as a partisan on Artie's side in his long and tortured relationship with Paul Simon. As the years passed, I got a far more nuanced education on that partnership. Artie remained a lifelong pal.

History is just one damn fact after another

It's not quite true that history is written by the winners. It's written by the best publicists on the winning team.

If this were a novel, you'd have to start a new chapter as soon as I appeared.

Emperor," I said, "if a character has run its course, then it's run its course. What do you want me to do? Go and talk the author out of it?" "Would you?" replied Zhark, opening his eyes wide. "Would you really do that?" "No. You can't have characters trying to tell their authors what to write in their books. Besides, within your books you are truly evil and need to be punished.

The problem with pianos," I began, "is that there aren't enough to go around. Lots of people in the BookWorld play them, they frequently appear in the narrative, and they're often used as plot devices. Yet for an unfathomable reason that no one can fully explain, there are only fifteen to cover the entire BookWorld.