Quotes About Narrative

What is your story sir? I said. That is the dilemma, he replied. I do not know if I am the teller or the tale.

I'm telling you stories. Trust me. I

Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. Some people say there are true things to be found, some people say all kinds of things can be proved. I don't believe them. The only thing for certain is how complicated it all is, like string full of knots. It's all there but hard to find the beginning and impossible to fathom the end. The best you can do is admire the cat's cradle, and maybe knot it up a bit more.

What makes up a life; events or the recollection of events? How much of recollection is invention? Whose invention?

Very often history is a means of denying the past. Denying the past is to refuse to recognise its integrity.

If there are only four possible endings to any story – comedy, tragedy, revenge and forgiveness –

The Photograph and the Journal

History gets written by the winners, he said, and when the crooks win, you get crooked history.

This is what I thought: for the most banal even to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell.

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his life as if he were recounting it.

Voici ce que j'ai pensé : pour que l'événement le plus banal devienne une aventure, il faut et il suffit qu'on se mette à la raconter. C'est ce qui dupe les gens : un homme, c'est toujours un conteur d'histoires, il vit entouré de ses histoires et des histoires d'autrui, il voit tout ce qui lui arrive à travers elles ; et il cherche à vivre sa vie comme s'il la racontait. Mais il faut choisir : vivre ou raconter.

This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell.

Poetry creates the myth, the prose writer draws its portrait.

Pour que l'événement le plus banal devienne une aventure, il faut et il suffit qu'on se mette à le raconter.

He pensado lo siguiente: para que el suceso más trivial se convierta en aventura, es necesario y suficiente contarlo . Es esto lo que engaña a la gente: el hombre es siempre un narrador de historias; vive rodeado de sus historias y trata de vivir su vida como si la contara. Pero hay que escoger: o vivir o contar.

When you're a story teller, you work out everything. You work out who these people are, what's going to be happening. The environment in which they live.

I have the "thing" worked out - the trick or the surprise or the pivotal fact. Then I just start somewhere and let the story work itself out.

Sometimes a book isn't a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. Sometimes it's the only story you know how to tell.

WORK ON YOUR STORY! He/she who has the best story wins! In life! In business! The White House!

My work may feature brown faces but it could be anybody's story.

I work really out of mythology, so often I work out of a story that has remained lodged inside somehow, or I work out of history, you know, out of a sense of historical inevitability with characters.

Action alone doesnt work in Germany - you need an emotional element to the story.

The story is a piece of work. The novel is a way of life.