Quotes About Narrative

Aristotle tells us that the plot should be so tight that if you took away any one incident, the whole would literally collapse:

Good writers serve their stories; bad writers serve their own agendas.

The story of Trump was the story of how he tried to make himself a story.

Bannon didn't promote internal debate, provide policy rationale, or deliver PowerPoint presentations; instead, he was the equivalent of Trump's personal talk radio. Trump could turn him on at any moment, and it pleased him that Bannon's pronouncements and views would consistently be fully formed and ever available, a bracing, unified-field narrative

The greater White House wholly believed that the story was an invented construct of weak if not preposterous narrative threads, with a mind-boggling thesis: We fixed the election with the Russians, OMG! The anti-Trump world, and especially its media—that is, the media—believed that there was a high, if not overwhelming, likelihood that there was something significant there, and a decent chance that it could be brought home.

It was insidious. It was, to them, although they didn't put it this way, similar to the kind of dark Clinton-like conspiracies that Republicans were more wont to accuse liberals of—Whitewater, Benghazi, Emailgate. That is, an obsessive narrative that leads to investigations, which lead to other investigations, and to more obsessive no-escape media coverage. This was modern politics: blood-sport conspiracies that were about trying to destroy people and careers.

Donald Trump produced on a daily basis an astonishing, can't-stop-following-it narrative.

Novel is a particular form of narrative./ And narrative is a phenomenon which extends considerably beyond the scope of literature; it is one of the essential constituents of our understanding of reality. From the time we begin to understand language until our death, we are perpetually surrounded by narratives, first of all in our family, then at school, then through our encounters with people and reading. - The Novel as Research. (1968)

The middle sort of historians (of which the most part are) spoil all; they will chew our meat for us.

Jed then realized that he was standing in a book, and wondered if this book told the story of his life.

I always want to tell stories. But they must be stories that evolve, like our own lives. Perhaps what I seek is a new kind of story.

The realities of the lives of many LGBT people, from grappling with HIV to the presence of anti-LGBT violence, are unconsciously covered up as the victory narrative consumes us and as we allow it to happen at our own peril.

The victory narrative seduces us, however, to pull back just when we're beginning to win, in fear of taking further risks. The covering demand draws too many of us in, as our enemies put us on the defensive when we must remain vigilant and constantly on the offensive in attaining civil rights. That means being vocal, organizing at the grass roots, and collectively demanding action.

I paused, deciding which story to pluck from my quiver and shoot in his direction" -Eve

deep inside each one of us is the desire to write and control our own script of life.

We believe the explanation we hear last. It's one of the ways in which narrative influences our perception of truth. We crave finality, and end to interpretation, not seeing that this too, the tying up of all loose ends in the last chapter, is only a storytelling ruse. The device runs contrary to experience, wouldn't you say? Time never simplifies - it unravels and complicates. Guilty parties show up everywhere. The plot does nothing but thicken.

Once you've taken the knife out of your heart, it makes for a wonderful story.

The silencing of the Haitian Revolution is only a chapter within a narrative of global domination. It is part of the history of the West and it is likely to persist, even in attenuated form, as long as the history of the West is not retold in ways that bring forward the perspective of the world.

Motivation is, then, both another narrative aspect of collecting and its intrinsically ungraspable beginning.

No fim, tu morres. No fim do livro, tu morres. Assim mesmo, como se morre nos romances: sem aviso, sem razão, a benefício apenas da história que se quis contar. Assim, tu morres e eu conto. E ficamos de contas saldadas.

Los hombres revolotean alrededor de la mentira como las moscas alrededor de un panal de miel, y las palabras del narrador

The function of camera movement is to assist the storytelling. That's all it is. It cannot be there just to demonstrate itself.

He once said that just bec ause you can go on at length doesn't mean that you have something to say, it doesn't mean you have a story to tell; just because you've been unlucky or short-changed or fucked over or fallen heavily on the thorns of life - that's no justification

Any good movie is filled with secrets.