Narrative Quotes - Page 2

• We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images.

  Joan Didion

  Lines, Thin Air, Imposition

  Joan Didion (2013). “The White Album”, p.5, Zola Books

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• The lyric self is the self; the narrative self is not.

  Li-Young Lee

  Self

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• The phantasmagoria, the actual experience that we try to understand and organize through narrative, varies from place to place. No single narrative serves the needs of everyone everywhere.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Trying, Needs, Organize

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• There's something in psychology called the narrative paradigm, which essentially means that we think of our lives as stories in which we are the main characters.

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Character, Mean, Thinking

  "There Is No Real Life". Interview with Brad Fox, www.guernicamag.com. March 15, 2013.

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• We have the right, and the obligation, to tell old stories in our own ways, because they are our stories.

  Neil Gaiman

  Writing, Rights, Stories

  Neil Gaiman (2002). “Adventures in the Dream Trade”, N E S F A Press

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• The best way to truly understand narrative art is to experience it.

  George Lucas

  Art, Way, Narrative Art

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• The word "story" is short for the word "history." They both have the same root and fundamentally mean the same thing. A story is a narrative on an event or series of events, just like history.

  James M. Kouzes

  Mean, Roots, Events

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• We live in a world of competing narratives. In the end, we have to decide for ourselves which is right. And having made that decision, we then need to inhabit the story we trust.

  Alister E. McGrath

  Decision, Needs, Stories

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• There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Fiction, Fiction And Nonfiction, Nonfiction

  New York Times Book Review, January 27, 1988.

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• All the gossip and craziness becomes a kind of sustained narrative which, in turn, can become history. It's scary.

  Barbara Kruger

  Artist, Gossip, Scary

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• The narrative of serial art works more like music than like literature.

  Sol LeWitt

  Art, Literature, Serials

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• I like narrative storytelling as being part of a tradition, a folk tradition.

  Bruce Springsteen

  Rock N Roll, Tradition, Storytelling

  "A fan's eye view". Interview with Nick Hornby, www.theguardian.com. July 17, 2005.

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• I think that rap is narrative, when it's done right.

  Ajay Naidu

  Rap, Thinking, Done

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• I think the key divide between the interactive media and the narrative media is the difficulty in opening up an empathic pathway between the gamer and the character, as differentiated from the audience and the characters in a movie or a television show.

  Steven Spielberg

  Character, Thinking, Keys

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• If you do weave one-liners into a story, you have to have an overall story as well, otherwise it doesn't really count as narrative.

  Tim Vine

  Stories, One Liner, Wells

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• As popular culture becomes more presentist, we move away from entertainment as the vicarious experience of a narrative - as watching someone else's story - and much more toward enacting one's own story. Moving away from myths and toward fantasy role-playing games, away from movies and toward videogames.

  Douglas Rushkoff

  Moving, Playing Games, Role Playing

  "Douglas Rushkoff on Khaleesi Lady Gaga and why Sopranos' end works but Lost's doesn't". The A.V. Club Interview, www.avclub.com. March 22, 2013.

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• In the digital universe, our personal history and its sense of narrative is succeeded by our social networking profile - a snapshot of the current moment. The information itself - our social graph of friends and likes - is a product being sold to market researchers in order to better predict and guide our futures.

  Douglas Rushkoff

  Order, Networking, Snapshots

  Douglas Rushkoff (2013). “Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now”, p.57, Penguin

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• Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.

  W. S. Gilbert

  Giving, Details, Statistics

  The Mikado act 2 (1885)

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• Our own genomes carry the story of evolution, written in DNA, the language of molecular genetics, and the narrative is unmistakable.

  Kenneth R. Miller

  Dna, Stories, Evolution

  "Seals, evolution, and the real 'missing link'" by Kenneth R Miller, www.theguardian.com. April 29, 2009.

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• I have always wanted what I have now come to call the voice of personal narrative. That has always been the appealing voice in poetry. It started for me lyrically in Shakespeare's sonnets.

  Diane Wakoski

  Voice, Literature, Shakespeare's Sonnets

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• I do insist on making what I hope is sense so there's always a coherent narrative or argument that the reader can follow.

  Howard Nemerov

  Literature, Argument, Reader

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• It has always been something I could do, and it may seem odd that in my case I seem to create an interesting narrative and frustrate the readers opportunities to follow it at every step.

  Harry Mathews

  Opportunity, Interesting, May

  "Agent Provocateur: Harry Matthews with Johannah Rogers". The Brooklyn Rail Interview, brooklynrail.org. June 1, 2005.

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• So much of literary sci-fi is about creating worlds that are rich and detailed and make sense at a social level. We'll create a world for people and then later present a narrative in that world.

  James Cameron

  Creating, People, World

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• I see TV as a picture medium rather than a narrative medium.

  Brian Eno

  Tvs, Mediums

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• Southern poets are still writing narrative poems, poems in forms, dramatic poems.

  Robert Morgan

  Writing, Southern, Dramatic

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