Narrative Quotes - Page 22

• I never even considered writing a career option. I just liked the play of words. I was certainly interested in story, but the stories I was telling then were in narrative verse and prose poems, short and succinct, except for one novel-length poem written in narrative couplets.

  Charles de Lint

  Writing, Play, Careers

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• I believe a good writer can write a good book with any sort of character, in any sort of setting, but I prefer to write about the outsider. It might just be because I've been one (or perceived myself to be one) for so much of my life. But the simple fact of being marginalized immediately brings conflict to a story before the narrative even begins, and that's gold for a writer because it means that your character already has depth before events begin to unfold.

  Charles de Lint

  Believe, Book, Writing

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• The Old Testament contains fabulous elements. The New Testament consists mostly of teaching, not of narrative at all: but where it is narrative, it is, in my opinion, historical. As to the fabulous element in the Old Testament, I very much doubt if you would be wise to chuck it out.

  C. S. Lewis

  Wise, Teaching, Historical

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• We cherish the conventional story of Dr. King and nonviolence, in fact, precisely because that narrative demands so little of us…This conventional narrative is soothing, moving, and politically acceptable, and has only the disadvantage of bearing no resemblance to what actually happened.

  Timothy B. Tyson

  Kings, Moving, Demand

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• As project chief you are creating a narrative, a story, a good yarn. If you look at the process-journey that way, you and your gang will ... dramatically up the odds of a WOW outcome!

  Tom Peters

  Journey, Odds, Yarn

  Free eMail Subscriptions Available at TomPeters.com, November 5, 2010.

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• I think human beings wouldn't be human without narrative fiction.

  Paul Auster

  Thinking, Fiction, Humans

  Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 5, 2009.

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• Writers know - especially new writers - [that] a lot of it [creative process] is the prewriting stage, the talking, brainstorming, the narrative arc and the character sketches.

  Jenna Bush

  Character, Talking, Creative

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• Those who first invented and then named the constellations were storytellers. Tracing an imaginary line between a cluster of stars gave them an image and an identity. The stars threaded on that line were like events threaded on a narrative. Imagining the constellations did not of course change the stars, nor did it change the black emptiness that surrounds them. What it changed was the way people read the night sky.

  John Berger

  Stars, Night, Sky

  John Berger (2014). “And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief As Photos”, p.8, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• How I Shed My Skin is, simply put, a brilliant book. While I was reading, I kept thinking two things. One, this is totally shocking. Two, it's not at all shocking, but a familiar part of my life and memory. Grimsley's narrative is straightforward and plain-spoken while at the same time achingly moving and intimately honest, and it does more to explain the South than anything I've read in a long, long time.

  Josephine Humphreys

  Memories, Moving, Book

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• I was a narrative historian, believing more and more as I matured that the first function of the historian was to answer the child's question, "What happened next?

  A. J. P. Taylor

  Children, Believe, Answers

  "A Personal History". Book by A. J. P. Taylor, p.301, 1983.

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• In the hyper-sensitised reality of the region in which any criticism of Israel is swiftly and often unfairly branded as anti-Semitic, it can become counterproductive to inflame rather than explain and this means to hear the narratives of both sides, to articulate the suffering on both sides, not just the Palestinians.

  Jane Fonda

  Mean, Reality, Israel

  "Jane Fonda apologises over Toronto petition" by Ben Child, www.theguardian.com. September 15, 2009.

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• The aspect of the venerable mansion has always affected me like a human countenance, bearing the traces not merely of outward storm and sunshine, but expressive also, of the long lapse of mortal life, and accompanying vicissitudes that have passed within. Were these to be worthily recounted, they would form a narrative of no small interest and instruction, and possessing, moreover, a certain remarkable unity, which might almost seem the result of artistic arrangement.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Sunshine, Long, Unity

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (2015). “Complete Novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated Edition): Fanshawe, The Scarlet Letter with its Adaptation, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, The Marble Faun, The Dolliver Romance, Septimius Felton, Grimshawe's Secret and Biography”, p.349, e-artnow

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• Believing in fate has probably always arisen in part because of the delights and terrors of storytelling. We have to realize--to learn--that in life we are not the readers but the authors of our own narratives.

  Margaret Visser

  Believe, Fate, Delight

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• By denying people's sense of visual beauty in painting and sculpture , melody in music , meter and rhyme in poetry , plot and narrative and character in fiction , the elite arts wrote off the vast majority of their audience . They purposely excluded people who approach art in part for pleasure and edification in favour of social one-upmanship and an ever-narrowing, in-crowd elite.

  Steven Pinker

  Art, Character, People

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• I have a great amount of respect for the audience. They know narrative construct. They know all the tropes.

  Paul Scheuring

  Tropes, Audience, Constructs

  "ZERO HOUR Executive Producers Paul Scheuring, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Zack Estrin and Dan McDermott Talk About the New ABC Drama". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. February 14, 2013.

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• I think people respond to truthful, simple narrative, and the more you try to dress it up to try and do something else, the harder it is for people to relate to.

  Liev Schreiber

  Thinking, Simple, People

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I do want to take some time and reinvent and get better and maybe get behind the camera a little more. I do want to direct at some point and start failing really early - start shooting videos and then commercials and then hopefully do some narrative.

  Channing Tatum

  Get Better, Shooting, Want

  Source: collider.com

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• The narrative that each person tells herself and others is a big part of how we construct our self-identities. It's one of the most important ways that we make sense of our past and present and understand our hopes for the future.

  Peg O'Connor

  Past, Self, Identity

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• In constructing our narratives, we identify which particular events or experiences were formative or transformative. In telling our stories, we also claim some authority over our own experiences and their meanings.

  Peg O'Connor

  Events, Stories, Authority

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• People don't think in terms of information. They think in terms of narratives. But while people focus on the story itself, information comes along for the ride.

  Jonah Berger

  Thinking, People, Focus

  Jonah Berger (2016). “Contagious: Why Things Catch On”, p.181, Simon and Schuster

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• A plain narrative of any remarkable fact, emphatically related, has a more striking effect without the author's comment.

  William Shenstone

  Writing, Facts, Remarkable

  William Shenstone (1775). “The Select Works in Verse and Prose of William Shenstone ... The Third Edition”, p.125

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• Baseball, boxing, handball - sooner or later every game gets compared to narrative, but only in football are the plays perfectly linear, drawn up with letters, and only in football is the field itself lined like a sheet of notebook paper.

  J. R. Moehringer

  Notebook, Baseball, Football

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• I am thoroughly tired of the fable style of narrative and shall do my best to get up something entirely different and possibly little more worthy.

  George Ade

  Tired, Style, Different

  George Ade (1973). “Letters of George Ade”

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• The ultimate for me would be to do a feature that didn't require any narrative structure.

  Johnny Depp

  Narrative Structure, Would Be, Ultimate

  "Going deep with rebel Johnny Depp" by Ron Dicker, articles.baltimoresun.com. July 8, 2003.

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• What joins the Americans one to another is not a common ancestry, language or race, but a shared work of the imagination that looks forward to the making of a future, not backward to the insignia of the past. Their enterprise is underwritten by a Constitution that allows for the widest horizons of sight and the broadest range of expression, supports the liberties of the people as opposed to the ambitions of the state, and stands as premise for a narrative rather than plan for an invasion or a monument. The narrative was always plural; not one story, many stories.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Ambition, Past, Race

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