Quotes about Narrative

Without desire how is it possible to make a story?

Begin as if you will finish. Let the story be told that you had the courage to begin.

Civilisation once looked to art as the means of passing wisdom from one generation to the next. Writing itself was invented in part to convey the sacred: permanent things deserved a permanent place, hence the hieroglyphs on Egyptian tombs. But a modern civilisation that no longer believes in permanent things, one that accepts no certain narrative of meaning, resorts to deconstruction, not construction.

Virtually every news source lists the greater number of Palestinians killed in Arab-Israeli wars in order to depict the Israelis as guilty (of 'disproportionate response'). Had similar reporting taken place during World War II, the Western Allies would have been deemed the villains since Germany and Japan lost far more civilians than America or Britain.

It is important to tell your story. It is equally important not to get trapped in your story. It is not what happened to us that matters but how what happened hurt us.

We got in the ring and wrestled almost every night and didn't have many days off... The only thing I knew for certain when I got in the ring was exactly how I went in. We told a story and the match was the story.

You don't really understand people until you hear their life story. If you know their stories, you grasp their history, their hurts, their hopes and aspirations. You put yourself in their shoes. And just by virtue of listening and remembering what's important to them, you communicate that you care and desire to add value.

When you get right down to it, intentional living is about living your best story.

Most people want to hear or tell a good story. But they don't realize they can and should be the good story. That requires intentional living.

Stories tell us who we are. They… Inspire us. Connect with us. Animate our reasoning process. Give us permission to act. Fire our emotions. Give us pictures of who we aspire to be. Stories are us.

As a communicator, I spend a good portion of my days sharing stories. People don't care a lot about cold facts. They don't want to look at pie charts. They want excitement. They like drama. They care about pictures. They want to laugh. They want to see and feel what happened. Statistics don't inspire people to do great things. Stories do!

My Sunday school teachers had turned Bible narrative into children's fables. They talked about Noah and the ark because the story had animals in it. They failed to mention that this was when God massacred all of humanity.