Quotes About Narrative

The only trust fund I have is this story, and unlike a prudent Wasp, I'm dipping into principal, spending it all...

What's the first thing a kid says when he learns how to talk? 'Tell me a story.' That's how we understand who we are, where we come from. Stories are everything. [179]

The beginning is not where your story starts but where you story starts to get interesting.

Life and Letters (New York: Knopf, 1972); and John E. Washington, They Knew Lincoln (New York: Dutton, 1942). Of course, no work was more important than Elizabeth Keckley's own memoir, Behind the Scenes (New York, G. W. Carleton & Company

Si no hablabas de algo entonces no había sucedido. Pero seguro que alguien iba a escribir un corrido. Todo lo que supuestamente no se debe saber, eso de lo que no se debe hablar, tarde o temprano acaba en un corrido.

Memory was a story you told yourself about yourself, extrapolated from a tiny dot-matrix of facts.

We learned that we are the stories we tell ourselves, and so we have to tell those stories with great care. Because whatever stories we tell ourselves, are true.

No one on earth is so boring and insignificant that he or she is not worth writing or reading about...One thing's for sure—no one but you can be the hero of your story.

This was the start of a period that blurs as I try to recall it. Incidents seem to cascade and merge. Events become feelings, fellings become events. Head and heart are contrary historians.

When you're inside your own story, you don't see things like a reader. You don't see your life in tidy paragraphs and chapters.

Like everyone else, he is the star of his own life.

There should be no promise of a plot. Plot is extraordinary, while chance is ordinary.

The Kiowa didn't scalp, and the real Mescalero did not live in pueblos, but factual accuracy, for May, was something that happened to other writers).

Your parents don't get to tell your story. Your sisters don't. When he's old enough, even Pat doesn't get to tell your story. I'm your husband and I don't even get to tell it. So I don't care how lovesick this director is, he doesn't tell it. ... No one gets to tell you what your life means! ~Alvis

People expect a story to always mean the same thing, but I have found that stories change like people do.

Stories are people. I'm a story, you're a story . . . your father is a story. Our stories go in every direction, but sometimes, if we're lucky, our stories join into one, and for a while, we're less alone.

All we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character-what we believe-none of it is real; it's all part of the story we tell.

All we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character—what we believe—none of it is real; it's all part of the story we tell. But here's the thing: it's our goddamned story!

Stories are people. I'm a story, you're a story . . . Your father is a story. Our stories go in every direction, but sometimes, if we're lucky, our stories join into one, and for a while, we're less alone.

Great fiction tells unknown truths.

This is what happens when your life is authored not by God, but by David Mamet.

All we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character—what we believe—none of it is real; it's all part of the story we tell. But here's the thing: it's our goddamned story!" Debra

all we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character--what we believe--none of it is real; it's all part of the story we tell. But here's the thing: it's our goddamned story!

I'm amazed at our impulse to express ourselves, explain ourselves, tell stories to one another.