Narrative Quotes

565 quotes by 468 authors

Perhaps fiction has, for me, served a similar purpose--what is a narrative arc if not the imposition of order on disparate events?--and perhaps it is… — Curtis Sittenfeld
Narrative living is the beginning of rhetoric. — N.D. Wilson
The process of writing a novel is like taking a journey by boat. You have to continually set yourself on course. If you get distracted… — Walter Mosley
From a tale one expects a bit of wildness, of exaggeration and dramatic effect. The tale has no inherent concern with decorum, balance or harmony.… — Peter Straub
So, in "Melting Pot" the children (about a third of whom were kids of color) sang the line, "America was the new world and Europe… — Tim Wise
Each new thing he encountered in life impelled him in a direction that fully convinced him of its rightness, but then the next new thing… — Jonathan Franzen
As I see it, a successful story of any kind should be almost like hypnosis: You fascinate the reader with your first sentence, draw them… — Alan Moore
What other species now require of us is our attention. Otherwise, we are entering a narrative of disappearing intelligences. — Terry Tempest Williams
We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We live entirely by the impression of a narrative line upon disparate images, the shifting phantasmagoria, which… — Joan Didion
Life is never static. Despite catastrophic tragedies, life has persisted in evolving new varieties of unimaginable forms. I find comfort in the narrative of evolutionary… — Greg Graffin
If you asked me what makes the world go round, I would say self-deception. Self-deception allows us to create a consistent narrative for ourselves that… — Errol Morris
If we wish to know about a man, we ask 'what is his story--his real, inmost story?'--for each of us is a biography, a story.… — Oliver Sacks
Every myth is psychologically symbolic. Its narratives and images are to be read, therefore, not literally, but as metaphors. — Joseph Campbell
The continuous narrative of existence is a lie. There is no continuous narrative, there are lit-up moments, and the rest is dark. When you look… — Jeanette Winterson
No matter how clear things might become in the forest of story, there was never a clear-cut solution, as there was in math. The role… — Haruki Murakami
Hardly any aspect of my life, from where I had lived to my education to my employment history to my friendships, had been free from… — Tim Wise
Why will people persist in reading strange meanings into the simplest of story? Is it not enough that a writer can entertain for a few… — Margaret Mitchell
The midnight disease is a kind of emotional insomnia; at ever conscious moment its victimâ€”even if he or she writes at dawn, or in the… — Michael Chabon
Perhaps if we could popularise through the techniques of branding and consumerism, a different idea, a different narrative, perhaps the world can change. After all… — Russell Brand
I am simply not interested, at this point, in creating narrative scenes between characters. — Lydia Davis

Who Wrote These Narrative Quotes

468 authors contributed a total of 565 Narrative Quotes, led by these top contributors: