267 Quotes About Narrative

What’s the first thing a kid says when he learns how to talk? ‘Tell me a story.’ That’s how we understand who we are, where we come from. Stories are everything. [179]

Above all, readers want useful information, whether from a road sign or an investment guide. This motive is not completely absent even in readers of fiction, although few people read Madame Bovary for straightforward advice on how not to run a marriage. At a more abstract level, readers want a narrative that makes the world seem to make sense, and they sometimes choose stories that fit with their worldview rather than stories that fit the facts.

Discipline is aimed at formation for a specific end, and that end is determined by our founding narrative.

There’s no way to really preserve a person when they’ve gone and that’s because whatever you write down it’s not the truth, it’s just a story. Stories are all we’re ever left with in our head or on paper: clever narratives put together from selected facts, legends, well edited tall tales with us in the starring roles

I heard the stories of the storytellers, telling the stories people wanted to hear. Everyone finds the narrative that matches the narrative they already know and want. It wasn't that I didn't want to share the truth. It wasn't that I feared the response. It was that I no longer believed in a truth.

You can't love someone without imaginative sympathy, without beginning to see the world from another point of view. You can't be a good lover, a good artist or a good politician without this capacity (you can get away with it, but that's not what I mean). Show me the tyrants who have been great lovers.

There are three points about stories: if told, they like to be heard; if heard, they like to be taken in; and if taken in, they like to be told.

Three apples fell from Heaven: one for the teller of a story, one for the listener, and the third for the one who 'took it to heart.

the old narrative focused on carving out separate spheres of autonomy for citizens and experts, the new legitimacy narrative will focus on collaboration between these groups