Quotes About Narratives

My views on wealth redistribution were shaped largely by knowledge elites who earned their living by words and ideas--professors, writers, and movement leaders. Like most of the broadminded clergy I knew, I reasoned out of modern naturalistic premises, employing biblical narratives narrowly and selectively as I found them useful politically. The saving Grace of God on the cross was not in my mix of life changing ideas.

History is the essence of innumerable biographies.

The beauty of Netflix is, their job is to put stories out there, and not stories that appeal to everybody, which is maybe NBC's job?

In childhood, we used to read stories from the Arabian Nights. Why were we so interested when it happened somewhere in Arabia, in a different culture? Until now, we hadn't gone to the Hindi audience with a good story.

The truth about life was that nothing ever ended until you died, and even then you just left a whole bunch of unresolved narratives behind you.

The truth about life was that nothing ever ended until you died, and even then you just left a whole bunch of unresolved narratives behind you. He

We all have stories like that, stories we rely on to establish our charm in the beginning of relationships.

I also need to prepare myself for the inevitability of utter boredom: Very often, single people don't do shit. They do nothing, all night long. They sit in a recliner and watch TV. I've probably watched more television than anyone you've ever met, and I don't even own one. Terrible shows, good shows, Golf tournaments in Cancun. C-SPAN. Hours of Oprah. Law and Order. Lonely people love Law and Order, for whatever reason. They prefer the straight narratives. p60

Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poorly -- all these make for great stories.

Federal Writers' Project, which collected the life stories of former slaves in the 1930s.

Among the tortures and devestations of life is this then - our friends are not able to finish their stories.

Among the tortures and devastations of life is this then—our friends are not able to finish their stories.

I want to be firm that the idea of the traditional itself is highly constructed and highly ideological. This version is one among many. There is no original, only endless multiple trails that point into the past. We can never grasp that past. These stories are always about the present.

Every people had a story of how the world had come about, the boss said, and every one was as valid as the next and just about as true.

I started wondering about life stories, how each one of us has one that isn't apparent at first glance, what we tell the world about ourselves and what we deliberately tuck away and never reveal.

They probably teach you that most plantation owners were kind to their slaves and that Columbus discovered America, don't they?

We're all made of stories. When they finally put us underground, the stories are what will go on. Not forever, perhaps, but for a time. It's a kind of immortality, I suppose, bounded by limits, it's true, but then so's everything.

I can tell you a dozen different stories. This is what we are: a collection of stories that we share, in common. This is what we are to each other.

history is scarcely capable of preserving the memory of anything except myths.

There are so many stories, she thinks, and most of them end up lost.

It does not end. A story finishes-or does for some, not for others-and there are other tales, intersecting, parallel, or sharing nothing but the time. There is always something more.

Just because life is hard, and always ends in a bad way, doesn't mean that all stories have to, even if that's what they tell us in school and in the New York Times Book Review. In fact, it's a good thing that stories are as different as we are, one from another.

Politics boils down to the stories we tell ourselves. And unfortunately, we tell ourselves different stories.

These guys at Fox knew that as a filmmaker, I could always tell different types of stories and each can emotionally connect to a universal audience.