267 Quotes About Narrative

So little of the world makes sense. It’s only that most people either construct a narrative in which it does or try to ignore it.

Every story needs some sort of secret that impels it forward. Otherwise why would the reader bother to keep on turning the pages?

Similar to any form of meditation, the act of contemplative writing ultimately changes us since it alters how we view the past, the present, and the future.

As a prose mode of expository writing, the narrative approach, more than any other, offers writers a chance to think and write about their personal history and cultural identity. A personal narrative process that constructs memories in thematic sequences represents the fundamental nature of the self.

People naturally impose a narrative story-line upon their experiences. Autobiographical writing allows a person to cast their experiences into a narrative thread and organize their thoughts based not upon conjecture but with applied reason.

Everything becomes a story and ends up drifting about in the same sphere, and then it's hard to differentiate between what really happened and what is pure invention. Everything becomes a narrative and sounds fictitious even if it's true.

An inclusive narrative structure provides the executive brain with the best template and strategy for the oversight and coordination of the functions of mind. A story well told, containing conflicts and resolutions, gestures and expressions, and thoughts flavored with emotion, connects people ad integrates neural networks

What monster sleeps in the deep of your story? You need a monster. Without a monster there is no story.

In the end, it wasn't so much that there was an alternative narrative--there always was--but it came down to belief: Which one did you want to believe. Which one suited you best? Or, perhaps more to the point: Which one told the story you were already telling yourself?