Quotes About Narratives

My whole life I've tried to find the thing I can do that other people can't do, and invest in that, and the one thing I can do is write narratives and build characters. I can do that.

Pervasive 'whites-only' policies and hateful narratives could not be further from the values that underpin our Armed Forces: those of integrity, respect for others, and having the bravery to do the right thing.

History is in the stories we tell ourselves about who we were and who we are. History is embedded in the language we use, the things we make, and the rituals we observe. History is culture—and so is Christianity.

episodes of the war

Strangely, Indians travelling outside the subcontinent do not seem to have left itineraries of where they went or descriptions of what they saw. Distant places enter the narratives of storytelling only very occasionally. Notions

The custom of prefixing or appending to historical narratives an estimate of the character and personality of the principal agent is of doubtful advantage at the best of times—it either imparts a specious unity to the action or permits apology or condemnation on moral and emotional grounds.

Why wait passively for the next terrorist attack--or a nuclear missile launched by a rogue state, or a cyberattack emanating from China or from a group of disaffected Estonian teens-- when we could be eliminating the root causes of conflict by fostering economic development and good governance, building relationships, creating networks of agents and allies, collecting data, promoting "new narratives," or striking potential future enemies before they can develop the ability to harm us?

Just as novels have come to be seen as narratives of identity, so too has politics become, for many, a search for personal authenticity, a journey of self-discovery.

American culture, perhaps more than any other, prizes individualism. Our narratives of art, politics, and business idolize the person who triumphs against the odds, with only himself or herself to answer to. The lone wolf. The stranger in town. The maverick. The plucky kid. The Final Girl. You've only got yourself, in the end. It's all up to you.

Take the Gospel parables: what are these stories, these narratives, if not powerful invitations to people to locate themselves within the situations of others, precisely in order to realize the moral landscapes of their life, so that they may develop their spiritual, empathetic and imaginative view of reality?

We need to tell each other stories of different ways you can live, different ways you can be; predicated not on how close you get to the life you were assumed or expected to have, but on the queer wanderings of a life you live.

All we had was her room, her stories, and the quiet that settled in as we tried in vain to spread ourselves out and fill the space she'd left behind.

I know how long—endless—people's stories are when they have grievances. And how tedious for everyone.

I looked at the people playing, walking, loafing, hurrying, or sauntering across the little park in front of us. How many terrible stories were there, just there in front of me, never to be spoken?

To have as its holy text a mixture of works of many genres Ã¢â'¬â€œ predominantly narratives, aphorisms, poems and letters Ã¢â'¬â€œ introduces great complexity into Christianity.

Never again will a single story be told as though it"s the only one.

Never again shall a single story be told as though it were the only one.

The stories in books hate the stories contained in newspapers.

Stories were the way People lived. Like paths, they could be traveled in any direction, yet always ran from beginning to end.

There is more than one history of the world.

[Of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales:] Here is God's plenty.

There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life.

It is the province of poetry to be more realistic and present than the artificial narratives of an outer discourse, and not afraid of the truthful difficulty of the average human life.

Between the experience of living a normal life at this moment on the planet and the public narratives being offered to give a sense to that life, the empty space, the gap, is enormous.