Third Person Quotes - Page 3

• I'm a strong believer in telling stories through a limited but very tight third person point of view. I have used other techniques during my career, like the first person or the omniscient view point, but I actually hate the omniscient viewpoint. None of us have an omniscient viewpoint; we are alone in the universe. We hear what we can hear... we are very limited. If a plane crashes behind you I would see it but you wouldn't. That's the way we perceive the world and I want to put my readers in the head of my characters.

  George R. R. Martin

  Strong, Hate, Writing

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• I don't like the strictly objective viewpoint [in which all of the characters' actions are described in the third person, but we never hear what any of them are thinking.] Which is much more of a cinematic technique. Something written in third person objective is what the camera sees. Because unless you're doing a voiceover, which is tremendously clumsy, you can't hear the ideas of characters. For that, we depend on subtle clues that the directors put in and that the actors supply. I can actually write, "'Yes you can trust me,' he lied." [But it's better to get inside the characters' heads.]

  George R. R. Martin

  Writing, Character, Thinking

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• Race was a word that bred arrogance, danger and violence. When had incitement to race served a peaceful purpose? Race was a fuel and it needed only a match to light it. Any match - my hostility, your ambition, a third person's advantage.

  Nayantara Sahgal

  Ambition, Light, Race

  Nayantara Sahgal (1963). “From fear set free”

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• Songwriters I've always been drawn to are people who deal with something of depth in the lyric writing. ...I've always been influenced by the folk song, the storytelling tradition in folk music. And so for years I wrote mostly story songs. I still do that, but as I've gone on, it's gotten a little more personal. I used to write mostly in the third person. I write a little more in the first person now.

  Bruce Hornsby

  Song, Writing, Years

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• He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a verb in the past tense.

  James Joyce

  Life, Distance, Reflection

  James Joyce (2016). “The Complete Works of James Joyce: Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Poetry, Essays & Letters: Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Finnegan’s Wake, Dubliners, The Cat and the Devil, Exiles, Chamber Music, Pomes Penyeach, Stephen Hero, Giacomo Joyce, Critical Writings & more”, p.1533, e-artnow

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• To converse with You, O King of glory, no third person is needed, You are always ready in the Sacrament of the Altar to give audience to all. All who desire You always find You there, and converse with You face to face

  Teresa of Avila

  Kings, Giving, Desire

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• So here I am walking around with another person inside of me. Though I think I put it better the day we parted when I said there is a third person we have created from the two of us. And I am stalked now by that other entity.

  Robert James Waller

  Thinking, Here I Am, Two

  Robert James Waller (2013). “The Bridges Of Madison County”, p.23, Random House

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• Studies show: Intelligent girls are more depressed Because they know What the world is really like Don't think for a beat it makes it better When you sit her down and tell her Everything gonna be all right She knows in society she either is A devil or an angel with no in between She speaks in the third person So she can forget that she's me

  Emilie Autumn

  Girl, Angel, Intelligent

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• I write almost always in the third person, and I don't think the narrator is male or female anyway. They're both, and young and old, and wise and silly, and sceptical and credulous, and innocent and experienced, all at once. Narrators are not even human - they're sprites.

  Philip Pullman

  Wise, Silly, Writing

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• Successful model? That's a myth. The year I modeled was the most painful year of my life. Editors would always talk to you in the third person as though you were merely a piece of merchandise.

  Jessica Lange

  Successful, Years, Editors

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• Writing for the stage is different from writing for a book. You want to write in a way that an actor has material to work with, writing in the first person not the third person, and pulling out the dramatic elements in a bigger way for a stage presentation.

  Brian Greene

  Book, Writing, Different

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• 'Envy the Night' was my first stand alone, the first book I'd written in the third person and I loved the feel of that, and it was different but it was also the same. 'So Cold the River,' I knew, was going to be really different, and that's why I thought about doing it as a novella under a pseudonym, because I didn't want to damage my career.

  Michael Koryta

  Book, Night, Careers

  "Born Storyteller: An Interview With Michael Koryta, Author of So Cold the River". Interview with Jason Pinter, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 25, 2011.

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• In this country there is a universal third person, the man we all want to be. Advertising has discovered this man. It uses him to express the possibilities open to the consumer. To consume in America is not to buy; it is to dream. Advertising is the suggestion that the dream of entering the third person singular might possibly be fulfilled.

  Don DeLillo

  Dream, Country, Men

  Don DeLillo (1989). “Americana”, p.189, Penguin

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• I think it is now time for social scientists to step out of the shadow and to establish an advanced social sciences methodology that integrates science (third-person view) social transformation (second-person view) and the evolution of self (first-person view) into a coherent framework of consciousness-based action research

  Otto Scharmer

  Thinking, Self, Views

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• Every third person in the world is a drama queen. And crying 'victim,' especially when you're not really a victim in any real way, feels good. It feels good to cry victim if you're not one.

  John H. McWhorter

  Queens, Drama, Real

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• With the latitude of unbounded scurrility, it is easy enough to attain the character of a wit, especially when it is considered how wonderfully pleasant it is to the generality of the public to see the folly of their acquaintance exposed by a third person.

  Henry Fielding

  Character, Easy, Enough

  Henry Fielding (1782). “The Beauties of Fielding: Carefully Selected ... To which is Added Some Account of His Life”, p.199

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• Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person; they make friendships as kings of old made leagues, who sacrificed some poor animal betwixt them, and commenced strict allies; so the ladies, after they have pulled some character to pieces, are from henceforth inviolable friends.

  Alexander Pope

  Kings, Women, Character

  Alexander Pope (1847). “The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq., with Notes and Illustrations, by Himself and Others. To which are Added, a New Life of the Author, an Estimate of His Poetical Character and Writings, and Occasional Remarks by William Roscoe, Esq”, p.383

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• Third person allows a deeper exploration of the relationships between characters. We can see their misunderstandings and hear what they think about each other. We can create a more complex structure with various story threads running parallel.

  Juliet Marillier

  Running, Character, Thinking

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• I've written short stories in first person, but you have so much more control writing in third person. Third person, you know what everybody's thinking. First person is very limiting, and I could never sustain a first person novel before.

  Tamora Pierce

  Writing, Thinking, Stories

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• I have a lady, she's a great lady. I love her a lot, she loves me. We're on the same page. Whenever that day happens when we're not on the same page we'll move forward with it. We're interested in having our lives be our lives right now and not a third person's vis-a-vis marriage and whatever that means.

  Jon Hamm

  Moving, Mean, Pages

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• I always thought 'chick lit' meant third-person contemporary funny novels, dealing with issues of the day. I mean, it's not the ideal term; when I'm asked to describe what I do, I say I write romantic comedies, cause that's what I feel they are. But I'm quite pragmatic.

  Sophie Kinsella

  Writing, Mean, Issues

  "Sophie Kinsella: 'You can be highly intelligent - and also ditzy and klutzy'" by Decca Aitkenhead, www.theguardian.com. February 12, 2012.

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• A Platonic friendship is perhaps only possible when one or other of the Platonists is in love with a third person.

  Evelyn Beatrice Hall

  Platonic Friendship, Thirds, Persons

  "The Friends of Voltaire". Book by Evelyn Beatrice Hall, 1906.

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• Consider the difference between the first and third person in poetry [...] It's like the difference between looking at a person and looking through their eyes.

  Diana Abu-Jaber

  Eye, Differences, Firsts

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• When it comes to exploring the mind in the framework of cognitive neuroscience, the maximal yield of data comes from integrating what a person experiences - the first person - with what the measurements show - the third person.

  Daniel Goleman

  Yield, Data, Mind

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