Quotes About Narrative

What we call 'the news' always has tried to tell a story, and it's always told the story it wanted or, put most positively, whatever story it believed needed telling.

I believe every one of us possesses a fundamental right to tell our own story.

Political dictatorships take possession not just of money and belongings but of narrative.

I always want to talk about real life, not about material possessions. I've got to tell the story of the people for the people and not for celebrity or fame.

Imagination makes us shape better stories, sure, but it also allows us to multiply possibilities.

I may well do some more polemical writing, if a subject that fires me up comes along. Apart from that possibility, I would like to continue to tell stories so long as I have stories to tell.

I do live with the very real possibility that we don't have endless stories to tell.

In a memoir, I think, the contract implies a certain degree of truth. I think you have to be as true to your memory and your experience as you possibly can.

I think the most important thing when you're telling a story is to just tell the story as best as you possibly can.

Networks don't want a show with a continuing story. There's no backend potential.

I think if I had been writing fiction, where the work is entirely dependent on the writer's creativity and the potential directions the narrative might take are infinite, I might have frozen.

'Boxers' was more time consuming simply because it was longer, but 'Saints' was definitely harder. I think it's just hard to talk about faith in general.

A book is simply the container of an idea like a bottle; what is inside the book is what matters.

Where I have come unstuck sometimes has mostly been to do with the stories not being quite right or not connecting with a contemporary audience.

You can't have bad things happening to characters simply for shock value; you need to provide context.

I think the context of an hour-long drama gives breathing space that you don't get in a film.

There is hardly a person alive who does not want to know 'what happened next,' in any context.

One of the things that set us apart early on, as opposed to other animated shows, was the fact that 'Bojack' was continuous and serialized.

I always have a contract with a character. Even when he's unappealing. The contract is to give him his due. To tell his story. And to keep his secrets.

I hate it when characters know things but only reveal them when it's convenient to the story. I'd never do that. That's cheating.

I'll write about myself, or people I know, or archetypal characters, but the goal is to get at some truth, not to necessarily convey my own experience as an individual to the world.

I don't really decide what the core of the story is before I write. I write to figure out what the story is. And I think the characters end up talking to you and telling you what they want to be doing and what is important to them. So in some ways, your job is to listen as much as it is to write.

Marc Cherry is so good at writing himself into a corner, then writing himself out of that corner. It's really fun to watch that.

Big things always interest me, but the big things don't work because they're too big. You have to find characters in which to couch all those things.