31 Quotes About Narratives

It is usually unbearably painful to read a book by an author who knows way less than you do, unless the book is a novel.

The point is not simply to change the narrative. (An infinite number of narratives are possible.) The point is to exchange the false narrative for Truth.

I love the longueurs of a book even if they seem pointless because you can get a peek into the author’s mind, a glimpse of their creative soul.

For Jabotinsky, the confrontation between Jews and Arabs was rooted in the fact that both sides shared historical rights to the same land. This was not a struggle between right and wrong, but between right and right.

The average novel invariably reads like a detective's report. It is drab and tedious because it is never objective.

A person who can "tell" is one who is perpetually attuned to picking up information in the environment … and the teller, in rendering his knowledge explicit, conducts the attention of his audience along the same paths as his own

It’s frustrating having these narrative expectations. All our lives we want answers—when will this happen, what is that, who are they, do you smell something burning, you name it. And everyone avoids the questions! Never do we actually get the response we’re hoping for. The answers in our head are far superior to whatever they, to whatever I, could come up with. So they leave it to you to figure out. ‘And where’s the fun in that?’ you say. And someone else replies, ‘You tell me.

the voice is simply the emotions and thoughts of the writerexpressed through the eyes of the character, his behavior, thoughts, actions, dialogues and affectations.

You don’t learn confidence, you remember it.