Narrators Quotes - Page 2

• Simply adored Timothy Schaffert's The Coffins of Little Hope: the voice of Essie, the narrator, is terrific & the last line blew me away.

  Nancy Pearl

  Voice, Coffins, Lines

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• Originally the structure was . . . a modern narrator who would appear intermittently and talk about his memories of his grandmother, which would then be juxtaposed against scenes from the past. But the stories from the past were always more interesting that the things in the present. I find this almost endemic to modern plays that veer between past and present. . . . So as we've gone on developing GOLDEN CHILD, the scenes from the past have become more dominant, and all that remains of the present are these two little bookends that frame the action.

  David Henry Hwang

  Children, Memories, Grandmother

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• I was not aware of how much I loved 'Canoa' until I saw it after doing 'Y Tu Mama Tambien' and realized that my voice - over about the story's historical context - that narrator - came from 'Canoa'.

  Alfonso Cuaron

  Voice, Historical, Stories

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• Almost all of the stories in The Matchmaker, the Apprentice, and the Football Fan are told in the first person, yet, depending on the angle and distance of the narrator, they exert different effects. The best are those in which the speaker never poses as an objective outsider. (...) Other stories are damaged by the urge to distance the narrator.

  Yiyun Li

  Football, Distance, Fans

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• And it [Fight Club novel] was written so general that my father thought I was writing about his father, and my boss thought I was writing about his boss. People really put themselves, you know, in the shoes of the narrator.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Father, Writing, Fighting

  Source: www.mtv.com

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• At a time when history made its way slowly, the few events were easily remembered and woven into a backdrop, known to everyone, before which private life unfolded the gripping show of its adventures. Nowadays, time moves forward at a rapid pace. Forgotten overnight, a historic event glistens the next day like the morning dew and thus is no longer the backdrop to a narrator's tale but rather an amazing adventure enacted against the background of the over-familiar banality of private life.

  Milan Kundera

  Morning, Moving, Adventure

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• By definition, memoir demands a certain degree of introspection and self-disclosure: In order to fully engage a reader, the narrator has to make herself known, has to allow her own self-awareness to inform the events she describes.

  Caroline Knapp

  Self, Order, Events

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• These types of films that are psychologically sort of dark at times, I find extremely exciting to do because there's always something to think about. There's nothing more boring than to show up on set and say a line and know that your character means exactly what they say. It's interesting to have an unreliable narrator in a film and that's what both of those films have been.

  Leonardo DiCaprio

  Character, Mean, Dark

  "INCEPTION Press Conference Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe, Christopher Nolan, Hans Zimmer and Emma Thomas". Interview with Steve "Frosty" Weintraub, collider.com. July 12, 2010.

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• ***A Last note from your narrator*** I am haunted by humans.

  Markus Zusak

  Lasts, Notes, Humans

  Markus Zusak (2013). “The Book Thief: Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition”, p.550, RH Childrens Books

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• It is rare and almost impossible for a novel to have only one narrator.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Impossible, Novel

  Mario Vargas Llosa (2011). “Letters to a Young Novelist”, p.20, Macmillan

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• I always have to remember that I am the narrator, but it doesn't have to be about me. A lot of songwriting is about trying to use what part of me is valid in telling the story. I don't want to overcook it, you know? Sometimes it seems that's really where the work is.

  Ryan Adams

  Trying, Use, Want

  Interview with Noel Murray, www.avclub.com. June 28, 2007.

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• I have never done anything except write, but I don't possess the vocation or talents of a narrator, have no knowledge at all of the laws of dramatic composition, and if I have embarked upon this enterprise it is because I trust in the light shed by how much I have read in my life.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Writing, Light, Law

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• This is what you learned in college," the narrator tells you early on. "A man desires the satisfaction of his desire; a woman desires the condition of desiring.

  Pam Muñoz Ryan

  College, Men, Desire

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• I am interested in levels of brain discourse. How articulate are the voices in your head? You know, there's a different voice for the phone, and a different voice if you're talking in bed. When you're starting off with a narrator, it's interesting to think, where is their voice coming from, what part of their brain?

  Anne Enright

  Thinking, Phones, Talking

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• I'm starting to think my narrators' sentences are getting too big for them, and they are getting to sound a bit samey and, more disturbingly, a bit too much like me.

  Anne Enright

  Thinking, Sound, Too Much

  "Anne Enright: 'I was always on the side. Like a salad'". Interview with Sean O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. April 30, 2011.

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• My narrators tend to be women with low self-esteem, so I can send them to charm school.

  Elinor Lipman

  Self Esteem, School, Charm

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• When I read to children, I try to become the characters. It's great if you can make a separate voice for each character. Sometimes you can lower your voice with excitement or get more intimate about it: you can lean forward and engage the children as a narrator or as a reader. It's particularly important that you find the voice that you want to use for each character, because then children can imagine that person as you're reading aloud. And of course, the illustrations help enormously.

  Julie Andrews

  Children, Reading, Character

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• September could see it. She did not know what is was she saw. That is the disadvantage of being a heroine, rather than a narrator. She knew only that a red light glowed and went dark, glowed and went dark.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Dark, Light, Red

  Catherynne M. Valente (2011). “The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making”, p.210, Macmillan

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• The text moves like a small crustacean with compound eye and complex nervous system; throbbing, involuted, it becomes a parasite on a different body, animal, using ‘filiform protrusions through which it sucks the vital juices of its host.’ Parasite or creature in mutation on the shore, torrid / delirium: mordant mortality, systematic competition the narrator against the I, leaking gas, a lapse of memory against a promise, an inset in a book. A muscular, involuntary bulging in the breast, circling all its inner surface: mesoblast: visceral.

  Nicole Brossard

  Memories, Moving, Book

  Nicole Brossard, Larry Shouldice, Patricia Claxton (2003). “The Blue Books: A Book, Turn of a Pang, French Kiss, Or, A Pang's Progress”, p.255, Coach House Books

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• When the reader and one narrator know something the other narrator does not, the opportunities for suspense and plot development and the shifting of reader sympathies get really interesting.

  Sara Zarr

  Opportunity, Interesting, Suspense

  "Teen book club: Cat Clarke interviews Sara Zarr". Interview with Cat Clarke, www.theguardian.com. October 19, 2012.

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• Narrator: You had to give it to him: he had a plan. And it started to make sense, in a Tyler sort of way. No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Life, Giving, Doe

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• Using a dog as a narrator has limitations and it has advantages. The limitations are that a dog cannot speak. A dog has no thumbs. A dog can't communicate his thoughts except with gestures.

  Garth Stein

  Dog, Thumbs, Gestures

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• It is such a secret place, the land of tears. That is what the narrator ofThe Little Prince says after the little prince argues with him the first time about matters of consequence. And he was right. My land of tears had been a secret for a very long time.

  Megan Hart

  Secret Places, Land, Long

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• The narrator blames the birds. And you want to blame the birds as well. I blamed the birds for a long time. But in this story everyone is hungry, even the birds. And at this point in the story so many things have gone wrong, so many bad decisions made, that it’s a wonder anyone would want to continue reading.

  Richard Siken

  Reading, Long, Bird

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• WARNING: The following is a transcript of a digital recording. In certain places, the audio quality was poor, so some words and phrases represent the author's best guesses. Where possible, illustrations of important symbols mentioned in the recording have been added. Background noises such as scuffling, hitting, and cursing by the two speakers have not been transcribed The author makes no claims for the authenticity of the recording. It seems impossible that the two young narrators are telling the truth, but you, the reader, must decide for yourself.

  Rick Riordan

  Illustration, Background Noise, Two

  Rick Riordan (2010). “The Kane Chronicles, The, Book One: Red Pyramid”, Hyperion

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