Narrative Quotes - Page 17

The truth is, narratives of self-justification burble beneath more of our relationships and endeavors than we would care to admit.

Tullian Tchividjian

Self, Care, Truth Is

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While historians may go on attempting grand, sweeping and defining narratives, they work in a time when readers know that another narrative always lies in wait, and that the more intelligent an historian is, the more tentative and self-scrutinizing the tone.

Colm Toibin

Lying, Intelligent, Self

"History students will no longer tolerate or believe grand narratives" by Colm Toibin, www.theguardian.com. August 10, 2013.

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The scientific method," Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, "is nothing but the normal working of the human mind." That is to say, when the mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in correcting its mistakes. Taking this point of view, we may conclude that science is not physics, biology, or chemistry — is not even a ”subject " — but a moral imperative drawn from a larger narrative whose purpose is to give perspective, balance, and humility to learning.

Neil Postman

Mistake, Humility, Views

"The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School".

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The continuous narrative of existence is a lie. There is no continuous narrative, there are lit-up moments, and the rest is dark.

Jeanette Winterson

Lying, Dark, Moments

Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Lighthousekeeping”, p.143, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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...the proliferation of luminous fungi or iridescent crystals in deep caves where the torchlessly improvident hero needs to see is one of the most obvious intrusions of narrative causality into the physical universe.

Terry Pratchett

Hero, Needs, Caves

Terry Pratchett (2008). “The Last Continent: (Discworld Novel 22)”, p.383, Random House

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Every person born into the world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique....If there had been someone like her in the world, there would have been no need for her to be born." --Martin Buber as quoted in Narrative Means for Sober Ends, by Jon Diamond, p.78

Martin Buber

Mean, Unique, Needs

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But most critically, sweet, never try to change the narrative structure of someone else's story, though you will certainly be tempted to, as you watch those poor souls in school, in life, heading unwittingly down dangerous tangents, fatal digressions from which they will unlikely be able to emerge. Resist the temptation. Spend your energies on your story. Reworking it. Making it better.

Marisha Pessl

Sweet, School, Narrative Structure

Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.83, Penguin

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...what I enjoy in a narrative is not directly its content or even its structure, but rather the abrasions I impose upon the fine surface: I read on, I skip, I look up, I dip in again. Which has nothing to do with the deep laceration the text of bliss inflicts upon language itself, and not upon the simple temporality of its reading.

Roland Barthes

Reading, Simple, Looks

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But the tale or narrative set in the past may have its particular time-free value; and the candid reader will not misunderstand me, will not suppose that I intend any preposterous comparison, when I observe that Homer was farther removed in time from Troy than I am from the Napoleonic wars; yet he spoke to the Greeks for 2,000 years and more.

Patrick O'Brian

War, Past, Years

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History was not a matter of missing minutes on the tape. I did not stand helpless before it. I hewed to the texture of collected knowledge, took faith from the solid and availing stuff of our experience. Even if we believe that history is a workwheel powered by human blood -- read the speeches of Mussolini -- at least we've known the thing together. A single narrative sweep, not ten thousand wisps of disinformation. (82)

Don DeLillo

Believe, Blood, Missing

Don DeLillo (2015). “Underworld: Picador Classic”, p.84, Pan Macmillan

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Money has lost its narrative quality the way painting did once upon a time. Money is talking to itself.

Don DeLillo

Talking, Once Upon A Time, Quality

Don DeLillo (2011). “Cosmopolis”, p.64, Pan Macmillan

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Laboring through a world every day more stultified, which expected salvation in codes and governments, ever more willing to settle for suburban narratives and diminished payoffs--what were the chances of finding anyone else seeking to transcend that, and not even particularly aware of it?

Thomas Pynchon

Government, World, Chance

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It seems to me, that this, too, is how memory works. What we remember of what was done to us shapes our view, molds us, sets our stance. But what we remember is past, it no longer exists, and yet we hold on to it, live by it, surrender so much control to it. What do we become when we put down the scripts written by history and memory, when each person before us can be seen free of the cultural or personal narrative we've inherited or devised? When we, ourselves, can taste that freedom.

Rebecca Walker

Memories, Past, Views

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We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.

Joan Didion

Suicide, Order, Multiple Choice

FaceBook post by Joan Didion from Jul 13, 2011

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Of course I know that the twins are only words on a page, and I'm certainly not the sort of writer who talks to his characters or harbours any illusions about the creative process. But at the same time, I think it's juvenile and arrogant when literary writers compulsively remind their readers that the characters aren't real. People know that already. The challenge is to make an intelligent reader suspend disbelief, to seduce them into the reality of a narrative.

Michel Faber

Real, Character, Writing

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History is the narrative of people searching for a place to go.

J. R. Moehringer

People, Places To Go

J. R. Moehringer (2005). “The Tender Bar: A Memoir”, p.160, Hachette UK

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In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative.

H. P. Lovecraft

Doubt, Authenticity, Natural

H. P. Lovecraft (2014). “The Tomb”, p.4, Simon and Schuster

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As with all other aspects of the narrative art, you will improve with practice, but practice will never make you perfect. Why should it? What fun would that be?

Stephen King

Art, Fun, Writing

Stephen King (2002). “On Writing”, p.178, Simon and Schuster

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It is photography itself that creates the illusion of innocence. Its ironies of frozen narrative lend to its subjects an apparent unawareness that they will change or die. It is the future they are innocent of. Fifty years on we look at them with the godly knowledge of how they turne dout after all - who they married, the date of their death - with no thought for who will one day be holding photographs of us.

Ian Mcewan

Photography, Godly, Years

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...for reading, once begun, quickly becomes home and circle and court and family, and indeed, without narrative, I felt exiled from my own country. By the transport of books, that which is most foreign becomes one's familiar walks and avenues; while that which is most familiar is removed to delightful strangeness; and unmoving, one travels infinite causeways, immobile and thus unfettered.

Matthew Tobin Anderson

Country, Book, Reading

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I have been criticized throughout the course of my career for placing too much faith in the reliability of children's narratives; but I have almost always found that children are a great deal more reliable in telling us what actually goes on in public school than many of the adult experts who develop policies that shape their destinies.

Jonathan Kozol

Children, School, Destiny

Jonathan Kozol (2005). “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America”, p.12, Broadway Books

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We should not be post-racial: seeking to get beyond the uplifting meanings and edifying registers of blackness. Rather, we should be post-racist: moving beyond cultural fascism and vicious narratives of racial privilege and superiority that tear at the fabric of "e pluribus unum.

Michael Eric Dyson

Uplifting, Moving, Tears

Michael Eric Dyson (2009). “April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Death and How It Changed America”, p.231, Basic Books

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Language is like a road, it cannot be perceived all at once because it unfolds in time, whether heard or read. This narrative or temporal element has made writing and walking resemble each other.

Rebecca Solnit

Writing, Elements, Language

Rebecca Solnit (2001). “Wanderlust: A History of Walking”, p.203, Penguin

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There are two facts that all children need to disprove sooner or later; mother and father. If you go on believing in the fiction of your own parents, it is difficult to construct any narrative of your own.

Jeanette Winterson

Mother, Children, Father

Jeanette Winterson (2006). “Weight”, Canongate Books

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They lived in a great city, a metropolis of many narratives that converged briefly and then separated for ever, discovering their different dooms in that crowd of stories through which all of us, following our own destinies, had to push and shove to find our way through, or out.

Salman Rushdie

Destiny, Cities, Crowds

Salman Rushdie (2000). “The Ground Beneath Her Feet: A Novel”, p.52, Macmillan

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