Narrators Quotes - Page 4

• Kerouac's books portray a hero and narrator free and easy, confident, sure of his rebellion against the American system. In reality, Jack was torn between Catholicism, Buddhism, and his own demon-driven pursuit of kicks, between spirit and flesh, between mom's house and the Beat coffeehouse, patriotism and subversion, men and women, society and solitude, carousing and meditation, sacred and profane, secular and divine. It's a miracle he survived as long as he did.

  Gerald Nicosia

  Mom, Hero, Book

  4 Copy quote

• I make very involved drawings, even little structures, and try using design to figure out the rhythm of a plot. If there are several narrators then a clue has to pop up in the first line. There have to be certain grammatical clues, or distinctive names.

  Louise Erdrich

  Drawing, Names, Design

  "Louise Erdrich's War of The Roses". Interview with Jeff Vasishta, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 9, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• But there's also a strong emotional core to counterbalance the experimentalism, with some incredibly moving passages around the narrator's relationship with her (also female) German teacher. It's beautiful.

  Deborah Smith

  Beautiful, Teacher, Strong

  Source: thequietus.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The moment in which the narrator, reaching for his boots, becomes vividly and lastingly aware of the finality of his grandmother's death is another such moment. It would be interesting to explore Proust's great novel from the perspective of seeing how stable synthetic complexes are formed and modified.

  Philip Kitcher

  Grandmother, Interesting, Perspective

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Consider the different narrative styles within the story, and the glee with which the "moralistic narrator" celebrates Aschenbach's fall - maybe, then, this is a hostile verdict and the international fame is warranted after all (given that Mann modeled his protagonist so closely on himself, it would be quite odd if he had intended Aschenbach's literary inferiority to be a fixed part of the interpretation).

  Philip Kitcher

  Fall, Style, Glee

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I can't reasonably pretend to be a transparent and omniscient narrator who brings no personal perspective. That person doesn't exist.

  Molly Crabapple

  Perspective, Persons, Transparent

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think every narrator is an unreliable narrator. In its classic definition - an unreliable narrator is one who reveals something they don't know themselves to be revealing. We all do that.

  Rob Roberge

  Thinking, Definitions, Classic

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have no policy, for or against: only a personal style. Which is to say, I use them when I think it's appropriate to; for example, an internal monologue by a locquacious and verbose narrator is more likely to be larded with adverbs than an exchange of instant messages between cops at a crime scene.

  Charles Stross

  Thinking, Style, Example

  4 Copy quote

• You can do everything differently in a novel. Hero narrates the novel; we're in his head. You're hearing all his thought processes and you're hearing him call himself out on his bad behavior. You don't have the benefit of that narrator in a movie. What you see a character do, very often, becomes that much more important because you don't have him editorializing it for you.

  Jonathan Tropper

  Hero, Character, Important

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Lauren Kirshner creates a first-person narrator you never stop rooting for. . . . [Where We Have to Go] highlights Kirshner as a new novelist to watch. A very strong, original debut.

  Zoe Whittall

  Strong, Novelists, Watches

  4 Copy quote

• I am somebody who creates images, with my perspectives, fascinations and my instincts as a narrator. You have to activate the audience's imagination. If you are just giving them scientific results, they would forget the film in five minutes flat.

  Werner Herzog

  Giving, Imagination, Perspective

  "Werner Herzog's Cave Painting Documentary 'The Birth of the Modern Human Soul'". Interview with David Gordon Smith, www.spiegel.de. February 16, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you just go get one of these little fine arts degrees or writing program degrees, it never forces you to confront your responsibility as narrator, whereas any of the social sciences make you at look the interaction between the storyteller and story.

  Dorothy Allison

  Art, Writing, Responsibility

  "A Conversation with Dorothy Allison". Interview with Renée Olander, www.awpwriter.org. October 2002.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Usually when I finish the draft of a book, I'm sure I'll never write another one. I'm just that tired and sick of myself. But then another idea starts percolating. It usually begins with the narrator's name, then some idea that intrigues me about her life or situation. I try to ignore it as long as I can, because I know when I start writing, I'll be right back into it, every single day. But eventually, I just have to. It's a compulsion!

  Sarah Dessen

  Book, Writing, Tired

  Source: fortheloveofya.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I learned capacity for self-reflection very early, finding it through interior monologues that books are so good at and that visual media is so bad at because it's so boring - nothing's happening. In a book, you can be inside the narrator's head for 50 pages, and nothing needs to happen. Then you learn to be inside your own head without something needing to happen. It's a very good antidote to a crazy, restless, "what's next?" culture - that you can just be in your own head and nothing is happening except that this is a rich place. I love that.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Crazy, Book, Reflection

  Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• When someone walks in and you say "a six-foot-tall man," you miss the opportunity to describe what a six-foot-tall man would look like to your narrator, because how the narrator describes a six-foot-tall man says more about the narrator than about the man.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Opportunity, Men, Feet

  Source: www.lightspeedmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm really shocked when critics get morally outraged at my fiction because they think I'm condoning what's going on. I never come in as the author and say, "Hey, okay. I'm interrupting the narrator here. I'm Bret Easton Ellis, and I'm the author."

  Bret Easton Ellis

  Thinking, Fiction, Hey

  Interview with Joshua Klein, www.avclub.com. March 17, 1999.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I personally just want to do as many different things as I can do, whether it's comedy, drama, science fiction, horror, narrator... You've got a documentary, I've got a voice. Animated films. Big films, small films.

  Colin Farrell

  Drama, Voice, Different

  "Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, & Jessica Biel Discuss ‘Total Recall’". Interview with Tiffany Rose, screenrant.com. August 7, 2012.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Even while I was working on the novel I would also write short stories as relief, just to be in a wieldier world that could negotiated more easily and more quickly. In the novel, I even changed the narrator from a man to a woman.

  Leni Zumas

  Writing, Men, Relief

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• But music doesn't sum up my approach to literature - even in Vain Art of the Fugue. To 'fugue' I had to invent 'trap-words,' or words that would force the narrator to turn around and start his path anew.

  Dumitru Tepeneag

  Art, Literature, Path

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A vivid portrait of a teenage girl and her family in disarray. Meredith is a wonderful narrator, witty, feisty, full of yearning, and the story she tells is as complicated as life itself. This is a richly satisfying novel.

  Margot Livesey

  Girl, Witty, Teenage

  4 Copy quote

• Sometimes I can better describe a person by another person's reaction. In a story in my first book, I couldn't think of a way to sufficiently describe the charisma of a certain boy, so the narrator says, "I knew girls who saved his gum."

  Amy Hempel

  Girl, Book, Boys

  17 Copy quote

• Any story has a beginning, middle, and end, of course, but the question is, where do you start it exactly? It's about a guy who is murdered in a fistfight, but how does it evolve and what does it mean? That's what I discovered scene by scene, and this innovation of coming in as a first-person narrator was a complete surprise to me. It just happened.

  T.C. Boyle

  Mean, Guy, Innovation

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Everyone is interesting except the narrator in a first-person story.

  William Kennedy

  Interesting, Stories, Crafts

  7 Copy quote

• My biggest lesson ... was to try and create narrators that were believable. ...so the listener becomes really invested in the story or the song.

  Kristian Bush

  Song, Writing, Trying

  4 Copy quote

• The truth of the matter is that for all the drive-in movie references, what Weston Ochse has really created in Multiplex Fandango is a travelogue. Acting as narrator and guide, Weston takes you on a trip to places familiar and obscure-New Orleans, the Sonoran desert, Mexico's Pacific coast, and the dark, impenetrable reaches of the soul. He shows off sights that chill the blood, and as with any good trip, the things seen and experienced along the way will stay with you for a lifetime.

  Jeff Mariotte

  Dark, New Orleans, Sight

  4 Copy quote