Quotes About Narratives

Vespasiano's biographies were crucial, therefore, to the formation of one of history's most famous and endearing (if sometimes misleading) narratives: how the rediscovery of ancient books refreshed and "rebirthed" a disoriented and moribund civilization.

Stories are the only things that can ever really change the world.

Some people think we're made of flesh and blood and bones. Scientists say we're made of atoms. But I think we are made of stories. When we die, that's what people remember, the stories of our lives and the stories that we told.

In the end, we'll all become stories. Or else we'll become entities. Maybe it's the same.

All myths are stories, but not all stories are myths: among stories, myths hold a special place.

That's the kind of stories I know. Sad ones. Anyway, taken to it's logical conclusion, every story is sad, because at the end everyone dies.

Children were vehicles for passing things along. These things could be kingdoms, rich wedding gifts, stories, grudges, blood feuds.

I wanted to paint pictures of people. I thought, "Why bother doing anything else. Everything else is a waste of time. I want to tell stories about people and their feelings and emotions."

Who says great literatue has to be written by men? Who says great literature has to be about scary, creepy stuff like adulterers being punished and black slaves breaking loose and giant whales eating people? Why can't literature just be stories about women? Refined, respectable women have just as much to say as ignorant black slaves or bloodthirsty Indians or mad white whaling captains. Why do we have to pretend those people's lives matter more than our own?

All that is holding us together [is] stories and compassion.

Miss Petitfour loved the little pictures, each in its own serrated frame and each seeming to tell it's own little story.

Everyone today has a story; the world's an archive.

I can see all the stories of my life. I can pick and choose from among them.

To witness the degree to which victorious nations simplified and cheapened the narratives of their rivals?

Perhaps it is a child's magical thinking. But you cannot know a place until you know the stories it tells about itself.

It is funny, but it strikes me that a person without anecdotes that they nurse while they live, and that survive them, are more likely to be utterly lost not only to history but the family following them. Of course this is the fate of most souls, reducing entire lives, no matter how vivid and wonderful, to those sad black names on withering family trees, with half a date dangling after and a question mark.

We each have our own narratives. The noise in our head, the worldview that is unique to us, the history and beliefs and perceptions that shape who we are and what we choose.

Everyone always acts in accordance with their internal narratives. You can't get someone to do something that they don't want to do, and most of the time, what people want to do is take action (or not take action) that reinforces their internal narratives.

Loving kindness practice helps us move out of the terrain of our default narratives if they tend to be based on fear or disconnection. We become authors of brand-new stories about love.

Identifying the source of our personal narratives helps us to release its negative aspects and re-frame it in ways that promote wholeness.

There were all sorts of myths and legends surrounding the lake. I mean, we're Indians, and we like to make up shit about lakes, you know?

And as he spoke, I was thinking, 'the kind of stories that people turn life into, the kind of lives people turn stories into.

She smiled. "Life is full of stories. Or maybe life is only stories. Good night, my dear Nao.

Sometimes stories are inherently important whether or not they have a direct relation to your life.