Narrative Quotes - Page 29

• A trial is two narratives competing for your attention.

  Harlan Coben

  Two, Attention, Trials

  Harlan Coben (2011). “Harlan Coben 3 Novel Collection”, p.610, Penguin

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• Big media are all about the angle, the spin. Look to the overarching theme that runs through each and every news story. Be hip to the meta-narrative peddled.

  Ilana Mercer

  Running, Media, News Stories

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• The only consistent narrative we possess is one that we share with every other life-form: we are born, we live, and then we die.

  Steven Erikson

  Share, Form, Born

  "Why Did You Bother Telling Me That?". Interview with Peter Orullian, www.tor.com. August 13, 2012.

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• Biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from each other; historically, as narratives - we are each of us unique.

  Oliver Sacks

  Unique, Different

  Oliver Sacks (2014). “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: Picador Classic”, p.101, Pan Macmillan

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• I was not a particularly brave child, I think, because I had a narrative mind, because my mind automatically went to any terrible thing that could happen.

  Daniel Handler

  Children, Thinking, Brave

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• Maybe, generations ago, young people rebelled out of some clear motive, but now, we know we're rebelling. Between teen movies and sex-ed textbooks we're so ready for our rebellious phase we can't help but feel it's safe, contained. It will turn out all right, despite the risk, snug in the shell of rebellion narrative. Rebellion narrative, does that make sense? It was appropriate to do, so we did it.

  Daniel Handler

  Sex, People, Risk

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• There are a lot of shows that have secrets and string people along and use the secrets of the narrative engine to keep people coming back every week. I don't know if those programs even have an answer. I don't know how they build their shows.

  J.H. Wyman

  People, Secret, Use

  "Executive Producers Jeff Pinkner and J.H. Wyman Interview FRINGE Season 4". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. September 23, 2011.

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• I love creating individual short stories within chapters, but I want to get better at building consistent narratives from start to finish.

  David Crabb

  Creating, Get Better, Stories

  "'Morrissey's hair, bongs made of apples, MTV's 120 Minutes': Inside this month's hottest new books". Interview with Teddy Wayne, www.salon.com. May 20, 2015.

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• I want to be in a good movie, and so the narrative is way more important.

  Charlize Theron

  Good Movie, Important, Way

  Source: collider.com

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• The problem is, is the White House and this administration have created a war against police officers in this country, with their allegations and false assertions that there's widespread and pervasive racism in the United States of America that lives in the heart and minds of the men and women in blue. This is a false narrative. It is dangerous. It is reckless. It has resulted in the loss of lives. They are not being held accountable.

  Kimberly Guilfoyle

  Country, War, Heart

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• I'm a project-based photographer; I think in narrative terms, the way a writer thinks of a book, or a filmmaker a film.

  Alec Soth

  Book, Thinking, Way

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• The chief character in this narrative is the Caribbean Sea, one of the world's most alluring bodies of water, a rare gem among the oceans, defined by the islands that form a chain of lovely jewels to the north and east

  James A. Michener

  Ocean, Character, Sea

  James A. Michener (2014). “Caribbean: A Novel”, p.24, Dial Press

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• Eloquence must be grounded on the plainest narrative.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Eloquence, Grounded

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.47, Harvard University Press

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• The history of mankind is little else than a narrative of designs which have failed and hopes that have been disappointed.

  Samuel Johnson

  History, Design, Littles

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1810). “The Works of Samuel Johnson”, p.398

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• Be it sculpture, poetry, or narrative fraught with terrible insight... art does endure. It troubles and pleases, inspires, and reminds us that humanity is ever capable of adding to the sum of the world's grave beauty.

  Stephanie Mills

  Art, Inspire, Humanity

  Stephanie Mills (2003). “Epicurean Simplicity”, p.129, Island Press

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• The word story is intended to alert the reader to the fact that, however closely the narrative may fit the facts, the fictional process has been at work.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Writing, Stories, May

  Bruce Chatwin (1997). “Anatomy of Restlessness: Selected Writings 1969-1989”, p.132, Penguin

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• A great novel is concerned primarily with the interior lives of its characters, as they respond to the inconvenient narratives that fate imposes on them. Movie adaptations of these monumental fictions often fail because they become mere exercises in interior decoration.

  Richard Schickel

  Character, Fate, Exercise

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• To transform experience and thought into language and narrative - that is beautiful even if that beauty is in brokenness.

  Alice Sebold

  Beautiful, Language, Ifs

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• Some people think or expect that you should make the same kinds of art forever because it creates a convenient narrative... I want my work to embody my inherent contradictions.

  Kiki Smith

  Art, Thinking, Creating

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• Poetic language is singularly appropriate for recounting the life of the king who is traditionally accepted as the author of the poetic psalms, some of which are included in the narrative.

  Robert Pinsky

  Kings, Language, Poetic

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• We normally think of history as one catastrophe after another, war followed by war, outrage by outrage - almost as if history were nothing more than all the narratives of human pain, assembled in sequence. And surely this is, often enough, an adequate description. But history is also the narratives of grace, the recountings of those blessed and inexplicable moments when someone did something for someone else, saved a life, bestowed a gift, gave something beyond what was required by circumstance.

  Thomas Cahill

  Pain, War, Blessed

  Thomas Cahill (2010). “Mysteries of the Middle Ages: And the Beginning of the Modern World”, p.3, Anchor

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• Over the centuries we have transformed the ancient myths and folk tales and made them into the fabric of our lives. Consciously and unconsciously we weave the narratives of myth and folk tale into our daily existence.

  Jack Zipes

  Fabric, Ancient, Tales

  Jack Zipes (2013). “Fairy Tale as Myth/Myth as Fairy Tale”, p.4, University Press of Kentucky

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• All writers, all storytellers, are imposing their own narrative on something.

  Michael Kimmelman

  Storyteller, Imposing

  "My Kid Could Paint That". Documentary, Family, Mystery, www.imdb.com. 2007.

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• Poetry is the rhythmic, inevitably narrative, movement from an overclothed blindness to a naked vision that depends in its intensity on the strength of the labour put into the creation of the poetry.

  Dylan Thomas

  Vision, Naked, Movement

  Dylan Thomas (1968). “Quite Early One Morning”, p.119, New Directions Publishing

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• It was my intent all along to write a nonjudgmental narrative of Bush's presidency. Along the way, a number of liberal friends of mine expressed disgust that I would spend time on such an endeavor.

  Robert Draper

  Writing, Numbers, Way

  "Books: 'Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush'". Live chat, www.washingtonpost.com. September 11, 2007.

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