Quotes About Narrative

Then, although it was still the end of the story, I put it at the beginning of the novel, as if I needed to tell the end first in order to go on and tell the rest.

A woman has written yet another story that is not interesting, though it has a hurricane in it, and a hurricane usually promises to be interesting.

Then, although it was still the end of the story, I put it at the beginning of the novel, as if I needed to tell the end first in order to go on and tell the rest. It would have been simpler to begin at the beginning, but the beginning didn't mean much without what came after, and what came after didn't mean much without the end.

Today I am feeling that chronological order is not a good thing, even if it is easier, and that I should break it up. Is it that when these events are in chronological order they are not propelled forward by cause and effect, by need and satisfaction, they do not spring ahead with their own energy but are simply dragged forward by the passage of time?

I am simply not interested, at this point, in creating narrative scenes between characters.

A música tinha um enredo e desfiava esse enredo como uma pessoa amiga que entrava para uma visita, uma pessoa muito amiga mas muito estranha, que ora chorava, ora ria, repetindo de vez em quando o começo da historinha: "Sabe, Virgínia, eu vou contar, era uma vez...

An eastern contemporary, with a grain of wisdom in its wit, says that "when the whites win a fight, it is a victory, and when the Indians win it, it is a massacre."

I don't just want to write a story. I want to pull the reader into my ink so they feel the cold of a snowy forest or the pain of a tortured soul. I want them to laugh and cry, to smile and sigh, and when they reach the end of the book and find themselves wishing it hadn't ended...then I've done my job.

How can there be a true History, when we see no man living is able to write truly the History of the last week?', as Sir Will demands in Thomas Shadwell's play The Squire of Alsatia (1688)

This is a work of fiction.

As the historian Robert Gildea has noted, "After the war, those who had done least in the resistance often spoke the most, while those who had done the most spoke the least.

A good story makes a journey go by more quickly. A really good story makes you forget you are even on a journey.

If we don't open up a way to process our disappointments, we'll be tempted to let Satan rewrite God's love story as a negative narrative, leaving us more than slightly suspicious of our Creator.

We must let God's Word become the words we believe and receive as truth. We must let God's Word become the words of our story.

Dreamworlds can maintain themselves only as glimpses. Once the writer transports the reader across the threshold, nothing that was promised can be delivered. What was ominous becomes ordinary; what was bizarre, quotidian. Unless you simply keep upping the ante, piling on the bullshit, the only way to revive things is to switch perspectives as quickly as you can.

History is politics projected into the past.

No amount of photography could replace the memories of a life lived, of lives observed and known, of lives elaborated in the mind and on the page.

Anyone who tells you her life is like a book has either been reading some bad books or is not being straight with you or herself about her life.

Lily told her about what had happened so far. (If you're interested, you can go back to the beginning of the book and read all the way through to this point again.)

We ain't anything more than a name and some likes and some distastes and a story we tell about ourselves.' 'And what others say about us.' 'If you want them stories heaped in, too, then you're welcome to them. And we're a body; and sometimes the stories and the name, they live on after the body.

I missed my studies with Dr. Trefusis inveterately; for reading, once begun, quickly becomes home and circle and court and family; and indeed, without narrative, I felt exiled from my own country. By the transport of books, that which is most foreign becomes one's familiar walks and avenues; while that which is most familiar is removed to delightful strangeness; and unmoving, one travels infinite causeways; immobile and thus unfettered.

History is not simply the great tumults and tragedies but the accumulation of tiny moments and gestures.

Because we ain't anything more than a name and some likes and some distastes and a story we tell about ourselves.

Violeta... ¿Violeta? Hay una historia que te voy a seguir contando. Voy a seguir contándotela. Tú eres esa historia. No quiero que olvides. Cuando despiertes, quiero que te recuerdes. Yo voy a acordarme. Existes mientras te recuerde. Mientras alguien te conozca. Yo te conozco tan bien que podría manejar un simulador. Ésta es la historia.