Quotes About Narrative

Containers may be the destiny of many in that they hold our remains after death. But this novel reminds us that narrative refuses to stay put, and that the effort of telling stories only pins things down so far. In the end it is language itself that is the most problematic container; it holds too much and too little at the same time.

If you want to burrow a message into a human mind. Work it into a story

As a fiction writer, of course, you need to take some leeway with certain aspects of history to make the story work.

Somebody once asked me if I have anything like faith, and I said I have faith in the narrative. I have a belief in a narrative that is bigger than me, that is alive and I trust will work itself out.

My work is to know the characters intimately and to tell their story.

Most of the history is a divine work of fiction.

The way I work with music is that I take on the story.

Things are going to happen whether you are there or not, you still need someone to push the button on the camera and get it and know it's going to work of the story.

Stories are made up by people who make them up. If they work, they get retold. There's the magic of it.

I can do my part of the storytelling. I can carry it. I can paint it. I can maneuver it. I can massage it. But if I don't have anything to work with, then there's nothing.

Comic books, graphic novels, involve constant toggling and it's hard work. You get tired reading comic books, but you never get tired looking at pictures or reading words.

When you're in the studio, you've got a narrative for what goes on, you might switch on a bit of gear and it might not work as you intended or come out a bit wrong, and you try and exploit it.

When I'm writing a book, sentence by sentence, I'm not thinking theoretically. I'm just trying to work out the story from inside the characters I've got.

I think many people need, even require, a narrative version of their life. I seem to be one of them. Writing memoir is, in some ways, a work of wholeness.

You just have to go with a good story and a script that you like and people that you like to work with.

When a culture is being dumbed down as effectively as ours is, its narrative arts (literature, film, theatre) seem to vacillate between the brutal and the bland, sometimes in the same work.

You can't but know that if you can capture the emotions of the audience as well as their minds, the play will work better, because it's a narrative art form.

Each story has a different approach for me and I try to work with lighting that will tell you visually the story better than if it was shot in available light.

Stories work, if they have a beginning, middle and end.

My life and work have been far from free of blemish, and so I think it would be unpardonable for a biographer not to dish up the dirt.

Don't overact the story of your name. Overact the story of your work.

Every work of art tells a story.

What story will your life tell? Love your story. Live your story. Lead your story.

If I'm honest about the people that I love, then I need my characters to live through the same things that the people I love and care about are living with and struggling with.