Narrative Quotes - Page 36

• Too many of us seem far too fond of narratives of our powerlessness, maybe because powerlessness lets us off the hook... But we don't need everyone on board; we don't need one magic person in office; we need ourselves. To act. It's the wind, not the weathervanes.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Wind, Office, Magic

  "One magical politician won't stop climate change. It's up to all of us" by Rebecca Solnit, www.theguardian.com. May 15, 2015.

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• Why should there be only one sort of photography? I want to create images with elements of my choosing, narrative or evocative... I give myself a literary frame, I tell a story.

  Sarah Moon

  Photography, Giving, Stories

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• It sometimes happens that you just know... You have a feeling that things are coinciding, and that they operate and work on a number of levels - obviously visual aesthetics, but also content and narrative in terms of the bigger picture. When document and metaphor come together.

  Paolo Pellegrin

  Numbers, Feelings, Together

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• I think that if you have a strong narrative, if the idea of the song can be boiled down to the basics, it won't change that much.

  Suzanne Vega

  Song, Strong, Thinking

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• It may come as a surprise to many that there are ciphers (coded messages indicated by a letter or group of letters) in the Bible. Some are hidden; some, when revealed, are a key part of the narrative itself

  Chuck Missler

  Keys, Messages, Groups

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• Well I'm not a storyteller, as far as telling stories which relate to experiences in my own life. That's not what I do. I write songs which have a narrative and attempt to make sense and tell a story - sure! But whenever I hear the word "storyteller" I think of a children's musician.

  Freedy Johnston

  Song, Children, Writing

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• To me, music and songwriting is... part of the intriguing thing is the creative process; you know, the creative thought process. Relying on that... there is some sort of inspiration there and you can't always put your finger on where it comes from. So, it's always been important for me to have my own thing and, even though I'm inspired by and influenced by many different musicians and styles of music, I was very determined early on to have my own thing. So when I sit down to write I don't necessarily have a particular narrative or message in mind. I'm interested in language and in words.

  Page Hamilton

  Inspiration, Writing, Creative

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• Frankly, Django is an American story that needs to be told, when you think of slavery existing in this country for 245 years. In slave narratives there were all types of tales and drama and heroism and pain and love that happened during that time. That's rich material for drama! Everyone complains that there are no new stories left to tell. Not true, there are a whole bunch of them, and they're all American with a capital A.

  Quentin Tarantino

  Country, Pain, Drama

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• More people pay attention to fiction and to narrative than pay attention to journalism. That's quite sad. More people pay attention to television than to prose. That's equally sad, if not more so.

  David Simon

  People, Attention, Fiction

  Source: progressive.org

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• Nobody reads anymore in America. Reading has become the least effective delivery system for narrative. That's sad because prose is the means by which you can deliver very complicated, nuanced explanations of problems and possible solutions.

  David Simon

  Reading, Mean, America

  Source: progressive.org

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• Usually at the end of each story we're thrown clear out of the story's world and then we're given a new world to enter. What's unique about a linked collection is that it can deliver both sets of narrative pleasures - the novel's long immersion into character-world and the story anthology's energetic (and mortal) brevity - the linked collection is unique in its ability to be both abrupt and longitudinal simultaneously.

  Junot Diaz

  Character, Unique, Long

  Interview with Gina Frangello, therumpus.net. September 30, 2012.

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• The greatest evil of American slavery was not involuntary servitude but rather the narrative of racial differences we created to legitimate slavery. Because we never dealt with that evil, I don't think slavery ended in 1865, it just evolved.

  Bryan Stevenson

  Thinking, Differences, Evil

  Source: www.progressive.org

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• The beauty of being a liberal is that history always begins this morning. Every day liberals can create a new narrative that destroys the past as it occurred. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

  Ann Coulter

  Morning, War, Past

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• One of the things cognitive science teaches us is that when people define their very identity by a worldview, or a narrative, or a mode of thought, they are unlikely to change-for the simple reason that it is physically part of their brain, and so many other aspects of their brain structure would also have to change; that change is highly unlikely.

  George Lakoff

  Simple, People, Brain

  George Lakoff (2008). “The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist's Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics”, p.45, Penguin

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• One of the reasons that politics lets us down is that we keep comparing it to our ideal narratives, to politics on TV or in the movies, which is tidier and better fits such structures.

  George Lakoff

  Tvs, Fit, Reason

  George Lakoff (2008). “The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist's Guide to Your Brain and Its Politics”, p.23, Penguin

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• Strong female characters - even if they don't necessarily make the same decisions that we might - make such great narrative material, especially when there's an equally strong male character in the mix.

  Meg Cabot

  Strong, Character, Decision

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• We do not enjoy a story fully at the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep, are we at leisure to savour the real beauties.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, Reading, Lust

  C. S. Lewis (2002). “Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories”, p.30, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• If we need simple narratives so people can amplify and spread them, are we forced to engage only with the simplest of problems?

  Ethan Zuckerman

  Simple, People, Needs

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• For long, history was mainly political history, and historical narrative was confined to an account of the most important crises in political life, or to an account of wars and great generals.

  Michael Rostovtzeff

  War, Long, Political

  Michael Ivanovitch Rostovtzeff (1928). “A history of the ancient world”

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• I used to use a lot of words in the paintings but stopped because it created a narrative - or an answer to a question.

  Danny Fox

  Answers, Use, Painting

  "Wild Horses, William Burroughs And White Cake With Danny Fox". Interview With Christiana Spens, thequietus.com. September 22, 2013.

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• We need a new political language with broader narratives. Such a language has to unravel the pervasive ideological, pedagogical, and economic dynamics of a form of economic Darwinism that now governs much of the world. This system must be demystified, politicized, and recognized for the ways in which it has come to pose a dire threat to democracy.

  Henry Giroux

  Political Language, Democracy, Needs

  "Higher Education Under Attack". Interview with C. Cryn Johannsen, www.truth-out.org. April 22, 2011.

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• I am not against identity politics or single based issues; at the same time, we need to find ways to connect these singular modes of politics to broader political narratives about democracy so we can recognize their strengths and limitations in building broad-based social movements. In short, we need to find new ways to connect education to the struggle for democracy that is under assault in ways that were unimaginable forty years ago.

  Henry Giroux

  Struggle, Issues, Identity Politics

  "Higher Education Under Attack: An Interview With Henry A. Giroux". Interview with C Cryn Johannsen, www.truth-out.org. April 22, 2011.

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• I had been thinking independently about our ability to forget things that happened, specifically, events that clearly were wrong, that crossed the line. It seemed to me during the 2000 election recount that the media's narrative was being orchestrated. Shockingly, after the Supreme Court decision, the media simply said, "Time to move on," end of reporting: "Here's the new story." And everyone forgot.

  Robert Kane Pappas

  Moving, Thinking, Media

  "Can the Corporate Media Turn Lies Into Truth?". Interview with Mark Karlin, www.scoop.co.nz. August 12, 2011.

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• I let my narrative embroidering impulses take over in prose poems.

  Matthea Harvey

  Impulse, Prose

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• Our minds simply don't function in some sort of narrative chronology. I think that one of the great gifts of writing fiction is being able to think about that.

  Dani Shapiro

  Writing, Thinking, Mind

  Source: therumpus.net

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