Quotes about Narrative

In a letter of Lafayette to Washington ("Paris, 12 Jan., 1790") he writes: "Common Sense is writing for you a brochure where you will see a part of my adventures." It thus appears that the narrative embodied in the reply to Burke ("Rights of Man," Part I.), dedicated to Washington, was begun with Lafayette's collaboration fourteen months before its publication (March 13, 1791).

Yet it is the narrative that is the life of the dream while the events themselves are often interchangeable. The events of the waking world on the other hand are forced upon us and the narrative is the unguessed axis along which they must be strung.

Where all is known, no narrative is possible.

Never trust the teller, trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

The real war will never get in the books.

Story is the bandage of the broken. Sutures of the shattered. The tapestry upon which we write our lives. Upon which we lay the bodies of the dying and the about-to-come-to-life. And if it's honest, true, hiding nothing, revealing all, then it is a raging river and those who ride it find they have something to give—that they are not yet empty.

Maybe stories are just data with a soul.

My grandfather told me our history through his stories about all the great Zulu battles.

A director should concentrate on his storyline and his characters.

Every good look needs a storyline.

I grew up in a family of storytellers, but Google has destroyed us because you can fact-check everything. We'd always like the stories to be a little better than they were.

You're never going to kill storytelling, because it's built into the human plan. We come with it.