Books Quote by Mark Ravenhill

Translating Candide into tweets has really deepened my appreciation of his writing - it wouldn't work so well with nineteenth-century authors. Every single sentence…

— Mark Ravenhill

“Remembering a narrative alters it.”

— Gregory Benford

Wherever a story comes from, whether it is a familiar myth or a private memory, the retelling exemplifies the making of a connection from…

— Mary Catherine Bateson

“At this point it may be helpful to remember the distinction that the narratologist Gérard Genette makes between story and narrative.46 A literary narrative…

— Ellen F. Davis

“Novel is a particular form of narrative./ And narrative is a phenomenon which extends considerably beyond the scope of literature; it is one of…

— Michel Butor

Literature offers us all, writers and readers, the best method of discovering and retelling the changing story of ourselves. The story is both journey…

— Jeanette Winterson

Novel-writing can be a cold-blooded business. One uses whatever happens to be lying around in memory and employs it to suit one’s end….Then, again,…

— Anonymous

“Much of the excitement of a new novel lies in the repudiation of the one written before.”

— Zadie Smith

I'm aware of narrating certain experiences as they happen or obliterating those experiences with narrative and then those stories - not the experiences themselves…

— Ben Lerner

“Every novel is brand-new. It’s never been written before in the history of the world. At the same time, it’s merely the latest in…

— Thomas C. Foster

“But a good novel is first of all an event; as distinguished from the continuous rush of many sensations and the messy overlapping experiences…

— Anonymous

If you follow the trail of your own enthusiastically repeated stories, you will begin to rediscover the things that invigorate and enliven you.

— Mary Anne Radmacher