Narrative Quotes - Page 31

• 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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• Literally, the Bible is a gigantic myth, a narrative extending over the whole of time from creation to apocalypse, unified by a body of recurring imagery that "freezes" into a single metaphor cluster, the metaphors all being identified with the body of the Messiah, the man who is all men, the totality logoi who is one Logos, the grain of sand that is the world.

  Northrop Frye

  Men, World, Body

  "The Great Code: The Bible and Literature". Book by Northrop Frye, 1981.

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• Philo of Alexandria introduced in the first century what has been described as the 'Hellenizing of the Old Testament,' or the allegorical method of exegesis. By this, as Erdmann observes, the Bible narrative was found to contain a deeper, and particularly an allegorical interpretation, in addition to its literal interpretation; this was not conscious disingenuousness but a natural mode of amalgamating the Greek philosophic with the Hebraic doctrines.

  Philo

  Greek, Alexandria, Firsts

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• My sonnet asserts that the sonnet still lives. My epic, should such fortune befall me, asserts that the heroic narrative is not lost - that it is born again.

  James Fenton

  Epic, Heroic, Lost

  "An Introduction to English Poetry". Book by James Fenton, 2002.

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• The lucidity of the battle narratives, the vigor of the prose, the strong feeling for the men from generals to privates who did the fighting, are all controlled by a constant sense of how it happened and what it was all about. Foote has the novelist's feeling for character and situation, without losing the historian's scrupulous regard for recorded fact. The Civil War is likely to stand unequalled.

  Walter Millis

  Strong, War, Character

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• For new media reactionaries...the problem is technology, the endless distractions of the Internet, the breakdown of authority in an age of blogs and Twitter, the collapse of narrative in a hyper-linked, multi-networked world.

  David L. Ulin

  Technology, Media, Age

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• Music is such an integral part of a film and really drives the emotional narrative, it has to be integrated from the beginning.

  Drake Doremus

  Emotional, Film, Music Is

  Source: collider.com

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• I believe that we are a story-driven species and that we understand how things are put together, in the context of narrative. It's a shame that science hasn't been taught that way, in a long time. It's usually the fact completely devoid of any human experience or any idea of how the scientist came to that conclusion.

  Ann Druyan

  Believe, Ideas, Long

  "Neil deGrasse Tyson and Executive Producer Ann Druyan Talk COSMOS: A SPACETIME ODYSSEY, Public Appetite for Science, and More". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. March 17, 2014.

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• I think it's very improtant and healthy to tell differnt stories than the corporatist narratives we are being asked to swallow hook, line and sinker.

  John Cusack

  Thinking, Healthy, Hook

  "Talking With John Cusack". The Washington Post Interview, www.washingtonpost.com. June 20, 2008.

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• Many of the narratives can only tend to excite ideas the worst calculated for a female breast: Every thing is called plainly and roundly by its name; and the annals of a Brothel would scarcely furnish a greater choice of indecent expressions. Yet this is the Book, which young Women are recommended to study.

  Matthew Lewis

  Book, Names, Ideas

  Matthew Lewis (2015). “The Monk”, p.223, Booklassic

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• Understanding is better than ignorance. Ignorance, unlike life, unlike narrative, is static. Understanding implies a forward motion, thus the possibility of change.

  Robert Charles Wilson

  Ignorance, Possibility Of Change, Understanding

  Robert Charles Wilson (2013). “Blind Lake”, p.117, Hachette UK

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• I suffer from and enjoy an incredibly vivid dream life. A lot of times there is a sort-of narrative and other times they are just funhouses of non-linear imagery and other scary stuff.

  Adam Rapp

  Dream, Scary, Suffering

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• What I like about narrative in general is when there is some incongruity between the form and content. Let's say, mixing up the gothic with a coming-of-age narrative. Telling a love story that's also a monster story. Mixing up superhero tropes with your monster tropes. I like category confusion.

  Kelly Link

  Confusion, Superhero, Age

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• You get a lot of narrative energy from people who make really big mistakes, who act against their best interests, who do things that turn out to have serious consequences. It's very hard make a story out of people doing the right thing over and over again.

  Kelly Link

  Mistake, People, Serious

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• The point of recapitulation in the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony unleashes one of the most horrifyingly violent episodes in the history of music....The point is not to hold up Beethoven as exceptionally monstrous. The Ninth Symphony is probably our most compelling articulation in music of the contradictory impulses that have organized patriarchal culture since the Enlightenment. Moreover, within the parameters of his own musical compositions, he may be heard as enacting a critique of narrative obligations that is...devestating.

  Susan McClary

  Symphony, Musical, Enlightenment

  "Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality". Book by Susan McClary, 1991.

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• In simple hearts the feeling for the beauty and grandeur of nature is a hundred-fold stronger and more vivid than in us, ecstatic composers of narratives in words and on paper.

  Mikhail Lermontov

  Nature, Heart, Simple

  Mikhail Lermontov (2015). “A Hero of Our Time”, p.32, Xist Publishing

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• When I'm writing a book, generally I start with the mood and setting, along with a couple of specific images—things that have come into my head, totally abstracted from any narrative, that I've fixated on. After that, I construct a world, or an area, into which that general setting, that atmosphere, and the specific images I've focused on can fit.

  China Mieville

  Couple, Book, Writing

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• [Director Christopher] Nolan has not only crafted the best Batman movie, but arguably the second-best motion picture superhero narrative (topped only by the linked duo of Superman and Superman II). For those who thought Spider-Man and X-Men had a lot to offer, wait till you see where this film goes. Batman Begins is a strong re-start to a franchise that deserves better than it has often been accorded.

  James Berardinelli

  Strong, Men, Waiting

  "Batman Begins (2005)". A movie review at www.reelviews.net,

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• Seventeen years after its intial release, The Empire Strikes Back is still as thrilling and involving as ever. Because of the high quality of the original product, it doesn't show a hint of dating. Neither [Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope nor Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi] were able to match the narrative scope of Empire, which today remains one of the finest and most rousing science fiction tales ever committed to the screen.

  James Berardinelli

  Stars, War, Years

  "Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)". A movie review at www.reelviews.net,

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