Narration Quotes - Page 2

• If we wish to know about a man, we ask 'what is his story--his real, inmost story?'--for each of us is a biography, a story. Each of us is a singular narrative, which is constructed, continually, unconsciously, by, through, and in us--through our perceptions, our feelings, our thoughts, our actions; and, not least, our discourse, our spoken narrations. Biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from each other; historically, as narratives--we are each of us unique.

  Oliver Sacks

  Real, Unique, Men

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• [On School Uniforms] Don't these schools do enough damage making all these kids think alike, now they have to make them look alike too? It's not a new idea, either. I first saw it in old newsreels from the 1930s, but it was hard to understand because the narration was in German.

  George Carlin

  School, Kids, Thinking

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• Although there was a screenplay, the actors never knew what questions I was going to ask them, and all of my character's voice-over narration and scenes were added after the fact.

  Griffin Dunne

  Character, Ghouls, Voice

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• History is principally the inaccurate narration of events which ought not to have happened.

  Earnest Hooton

  History, Events, Ought

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• The desire for narration keeps on reasserting itself, so that since modernism and fiction brought narration to an end, it is sought in memoirs.

  Vivian Gornick

  Desire, Fiction, Ends

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• It is a wonderful thing that so many, and they not reckoned absurd, shall entertain those with whom they converse by giving them the history of their pains and aches and imagine such narrations their quota of conversation.

  Richard Steele

  Pain, Giving, Quota

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1826). “The Spectator: With Notes, and a General Index”, p.132

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• I've always hated quotation marks: they're ugly on the page and they classify the text for you, putting dialogue in one box and narration in another.

  Catherine Brady

  Ugly, Pages, Quotation Marks

  Source: therumpus.net

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• It's not the subject of narration that interests me, but the structure. That's why I stay in touch with my old works, which I reread regularly. I don't hesitate to take up previously used images or even whole scenes.

  Dumitru Tepeneag

  Scene, Structure, Used

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I wasn't aware I'd write the novel when I wrote the New Yorker story either. And the narration of their construction in 10:04 is fiction, however flickering.

  Ben Lerner

  Writing, Fiction, Stories

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• When writers are self-conscious about themselves as writers they often keep a great distance from their characters, sounding as if they were writing encyclopedia entries instead of stories. Their hesitancy about physical and psychological intimacy can be a barrier to vital fiction. Conversely, a narration that makes readers hear the characters' heavy breathing and smell their emotional anguish diminishes distance. Readers feel so close to the characters that, for those magical moments, they become those characters.

  Jerome Stern

  Distance, Character, Writing

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• It can stand in the way of narration in cases where we want the protagonist to actually go through some kind of catharsis while our own (non-fictional) experiences and stories lead to something banal or completely uninteresting.

  Sasa Stanisic

  Catharsis, Stories, Want

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I like to blow up this notion that all we have to do as writers and artists is represent reality, which is presumably solid and self-evident, with no negotiation of the gap between myself and the world, between this body and this space, which needs narration to close it.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Artist, Blow, Reality

  "There Is No Real Life". Interview with Brad Fox, www.guernicamag.com. March 15, 2013.

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• So it became in my mind a nine-carol service; an oratorio and orchestral concert all in one, but with narration. That's something I've learned about, because it's the story that keeps you in there. I wrote a libretto and I gave it to John Du Prez. We normally don't work in this fashion but I said off you go, and he went off for about three months. He brought me back this demo which blew my mind.

  Eric Idle

  Fashion, Years, Mind

  "Not The Messiah (He's A Very Naughty Boy) - Eric Idle interview". Interview, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• I had never done a Director's Cut narration on Beaches so I did in time for the release of the DVD. It was a great visit and I do a whole-behind-the-scenes thing and I tell stories about Bette [Mudler] and Barbara Hershey and everybody and that was fun. It made me cry again.

  Garry Marshall

  Beach, Fun, Cutting

  Source: www.movieweb.com

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• To choose the ideal voice for a character is to give a character an ardent and vivid life, to allow him or her to speak, rather than speaking for them, in an older style of omniscient narration.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Character, Voice, Giving

  "Writing Lessons From the Madly Prolific Joyce Carol Oates". Interview with Alexander Sammon, www.motherjones.com. September 10, 2016.

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• Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Art, Book, Simple

  "Other Inquisitions". Book by Jorge Luis Borges, 1952.

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• When Veronica Mars was canceled, the following season of pilots for The CW had been announced, and one was Gossip Girl. I read it, and I knew I was sort of old to play any of the kids. I called Dawn Ostroff -- who was the head of The CW at the time -- and said, 'Hey, I did so much narration on Veronica Mars, can I narrate this show? And she said, 'Hey, that's a very good idea.' They knew I had a younger voice, they liked me and they knew I'd show up for work, and I guess that was all I really needed. It was so clear to me how sassy and catty she needed to be.

  Kristen Bell

  Girl, Kids, Sassy

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• World events can shape culture. Music is either a soundtrack for or a narration of changing times. And who knows how that's going to go?

  L.A. Reid

  World, Shapes, Events

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• In 'Labor Day Hurricane, 1935,' Douglas Trevor vividly recreates a historical event. While that is the only story in A THIN TEAR IN THE FABRIC OF SPACE in the historical past, many of the other stories juxtapose fact-both historical and scientific-with narration to an engaging effect, one that distinguishes the voice of this new writer.

  Stuart Dybek

  Past, Voice, Space

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• I couldn't sit down and write a novel or a short story - even now - because of my dyslexia. But I learned narration through movies.

  Robert Benton

  Writing, Down And, Stories

  Source: classic.esquire.com

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• The ‘I’ character in journalism is almost pure invention. Unlike the ‘I’ of autobiography, who is meant to be seen as a representation of the writer, the ‘I’ of journalism is connected to the writer only in a tenuous way—the way, say, that Superman is connected to Clark Kent. The journalistic ‘I’ is an overreliable narrator, a functionary to whom crucial tasks of narration and argument and tone have been entrusted, an ad hoc creation, like the chorus of Greek tragedy. He is an emblematic figure, an embodiment of the idea of the dispassionate observer of life.

  Janet Malcolm

  Character, Ideas, Greek

  "The Journalist and the Murderer". Book by Janet Malcolm, March 20, 1989.

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• I got used to [ Lars Von Trier] doing the narration for 'Dogville' and 'Manderley.' And I said to him I do these narrations for you but you never put me in a film! So he called my bluff and put me in 'Melancholia' and I was thrilled about that.

  John Hurt

  Film, Bluffs, Said

  Source: www.filmslatemagazine.com

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• I love working with Lars [von Trier]! I've worked with him three times. I did the narration of Dogville and Manderlay.

  John Hurt

  Three, Three Times

  Source: www.eyeforfilm.co.uk

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• Movie narration in the forties was radically different than the narrative involved in books.

  Robert Benton

  Book, Narrative, Different

  Source: classic.esquire.com

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• I was desperately unhappy with it [Blade Runner]. I was compelled by contract to record five or six different versions of the narration, each of which was found wanting on a storytelling basis. The final version was something that I was completely unhappy with. The movie obviously has a very strong following, but it could have been more than a cult picture.

  Harrison Ford

  Strong, Blade Runner, Unhappy

  "Star Wars Archive: Harrison Ford, Solo Artist". Empire Magazine Issue #156, www.empireonline.com. June 2002.

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