Narrative Quotes - Page 16

• Just as Renaissance artists provided narratives for the era they lived in, so do I. I'm always looking beyond the surface. I've done that ever since I first picked up a camera.

  David LaChapelle

  Artist, Cameras, Done

  4 Copy quote

• If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.

  Hilary Mantel

  Play, Ideas, Stories

  "Ten rules for writing fiction (part two)" by Hilary Mantel, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• For myself, the only way I know how to make a book is to construct it like a collage: a bit of dialogue here, a scrap of narrative, an isolated description of a common object, an elaborate running metaphor which threads between the sequences and holds different narrative lines together.

  Hilary Mantel

  Running, Book, Together

  "The joys of stationery" by Hilary Mantel, www.theguardian.com. March 5, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When narratives fracture, when words fail, I take consolation from the part of my life that always works: the stationery order. The mail-order stationery people supply every need from royal blue Quink to a dazzling variety of portable hard drives.

  Hilary Mantel

  Blue, Order, People

  7 Copy quote

• Novelists have to be adept at controlling the flow of information, and, most crucially, they have to be in charge of the narrative.

  Ian Mcewan

  Novelists, Information, Flow

  4 Copy quote

• My priority is my books, at least at this point. What I have to do is write the narrative of this time.

  Haruki Murakami

  Book, Writing, Priorities

  4 Copy quote

• If you write a novel alone you sit and you weave a little narrative. And it's O.K., but it's of no account.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Writing, Littles, Novel

  5 Copy quote

• I became very interested in the Islamic question, and thought I would try to understand it from the roots, ask very simple questions and somehow make a narrative of that discovery.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Islamic, Simple, Discovery

  4 Copy quote

• If you are making a script based on a book it can be frustrating going back to the source novel, because you're turning the story into a totally different thing; the narrative of film is different from that of a book.

  Clive Owen

  Book, Different, Stories

  7 Copy quote

• Three children have become adults since a phone call with Jo Rowling, containing one small clue, persuaded me that there was more to Snape than an unchanging costume, and that even though only three of the books were out at that time, she held the entire massive but delicate narrative in the surest of hands.

  Alan Rickman

  Children, Book, Phones

  "Every Snape scene in chronological order shows his anguished evolution" by Rob Dean, www.avclub.com. January 15, 2016.

  34 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's a long history of anthropomorphic animals in Japanese literature. The so-called 'funny animal scrolls' were the first narratives in Japanese history, and the heroes of many folk tales have animals as their companions.

  Stan Sakai

  Hero, Animal, Long

  4 Copy quote

• In art, scandal is a false narrative, a smoke screen that camouflages rather than reveals. When we don't know what we're seeing, we overreact.

  Jerry Saltz

  Art, Camouflage, Scandal

  "Cubes! The Horror!". nymag.com. April 1, 2012.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• What the British seem to like are television historians and naturalists, not public intellectuals. You can't help feeling that's because one supplies narrative and the other supplies facts, and the British are traditionally empiricists so they/we have a resistance to theory and to theoreticians playing too prominent a role in public life.

  Will Self

  Feelings, Facts, Roles

  "Britain's intellectuals: leading thinkers have their say" by Alain de Botton, AC Grayling, Susie Orbach, Paul Gilroy, Will Self, Mary Beard, Brian Cox, Lionel Shriver, James Lovelock and Lisa Jardine, www.theguardian.com. May 7, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• My sister-in-law believes that few narratives are so tightly constructed that you can't skip boring bits and still keep abreast of what's going on.

  Arthur Smith

  Believe, Sister In Law, Boring

  4 Copy quote

• There are certain things in 'Twilight'... As much as I'm proud of that movie and I do like it, I feel like maybe I brought too much of myself to the character. I feel like I really know Bella now. But most readers feel like they know Bella because it's a first-person narrative.

  Kristen Stewart

  Twilight, Character, Proud

  Interview with Dennis Hopper, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 27, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You can't but know that if you can capture the emotions of the audience as well as their minds, the play will work better, because it's a narrative art form.

  Tom Stoppard

  Art, Play, Mind

  "'You can't help being what you write'". Interview with Maya Jaggi, www.theguardian.com. September 5, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The only reason investors haven't run screaming from an obviously corrupt financial marketplace is because the government has gone to such extraordinary lengths to sell the narrative that the problems of 2008 have been fixed.

  Matt Taibbi

  Running, Government, Gone

  "Secrets and Lies of the Bailout". Article by Matt Taibbi, www.rollingstone.com. January 4, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's a wonderful narrative device to bring someone from the outside and look through his eyes if you want to describe the absurdity and preposterous reality that is accepted amongst the ones who are inside.

  Christoph Waltz

  Eye, Reality, Looks

  11 Copy quote

• I was an English-literature major, and that's all about stories and narratives.

  Rachel Weisz

  Stories, Literature, Majors

  Interview with Scott Tobias, www.avclub.com. May 14, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We need narrative; it feeds us in a particular way, and deconstructing it completely before you've actually experienced it, I think it leaves us unfed.

  Joss Whedon

  Thinking, Needs, Way

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. August 8, 2007.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The designs of the paper euros, introduced in 2002, proclaim a utopian aspiration. Gone are the colorful bills of particular nations, featuring pictures of national heroes of statecraft, culture and the arts, pictures celebrating unique national narratives. With the euro, 16 nations have said goodbye to all that.

  George Will

  Goodbye, Art, Hero

  4 Copy quote

• A turning point in the public's perception of the building art came with the publication of Frank Lloyd Wright's 'An Autobiography' of 1932, a picaresque narrative that captivated many who hadn't the slightest inkling of what architects actually did.

  Martin Filler

  Art, Perception, Building

  7 Copy quote

• North Korea aside, most authoritarian governments have already accepted the growth of the Internet culture as inevitable; they have little choice but to find ways to shape it in accord with their own narratives - or risk having their narratives shaped by others.

  Evgeny Morozov

  Government, Korea, Choices

  4 Copy quote

• Blog culture has a hard time digesting narratives, but it has an easy time digesting 'big ideas' pieces.

  Hanna Rosin

  Hard Times, Ideas, Culture

  5 Copy quote

• Narrative Collapse is what happens when we no longer have time in which to tell a story. Remote controls and DVRs give us the ability to break down narratives - particularly the more abusive ones. This is a great thing for escaping the 'ends-justify-the-means' traps of 20th-century wars and religions, but it can also make it hard to convey values.

  Douglas Rushkoff

  War, Mean, Escaping

  "Living in the Present Is a Disorder". Interview with R.U. Sirius, www.wired.com. April 8, 2013.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source