Narration Quotes

“The rules say that to tell a story you need first of all a measuring stick, a calendar, you have to calculate how much time has passed between you and the facts, the emotions to be narrated.”
― Elena Ferrante, The Days of Abandonment

“I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)... 'I spoke to three scholars,' [the character says 'at last.'] ...two of them said that, after death, the [sic (misprint, fault of the publisher)] just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran. [end quote]' ...I can see that he's excited. [narrator]' ...Now I have many positive things to say about Coelho: He is respectable, inspiring as a man, a truth-seeker, and an appealing writer; but one should hesitate to call him a 'literary' writer based on this quote. A 'literary' author knows that a character's excitement should be 'shown' in his or her dialogue and not in the narrator's commentary on it. Advice for Coelho: Remove the 'I can see that he's excited' sentence and show his excitement in the phrasing of his quote.(Now, in defense of Coelho, I am firmly of the opinion, having myself written plenty of prose that is flawed, that a novelist should be forgiven for slipping here and there.)Lastly, it appears that a belief in reincarnation is of great interest to Mr. Coelho ... Just think! He is a man who has achieved, (as Leonard Cohen would call it), 'a remote human possibility.' He has won lots of fame and tons of money. And yet, how his preoccupation with reincarnation—none other than an interest in being born again as somebody else—suggests that he is not happy!”
― Roman Payne

“I think one is naturally impressed by anything having a beginning a middle and an ending when one is beginning writing and that it is a natural thing because when one is emerging from adolescence, which is really when one first begins writing one feels that one would not have been one emerging from adolescence if there had not been a beginning and a middle and an ending to anything.”
― Gertrude Stein, Narration: Four Lectures by Gertrude Stein

“Gimmerton chapel bells were still ringing and the full, mellow flow of the beck in the valley came soothingly on the ear. It was a sweet substitute for the yet absent murmur of the summer foliage, which drowned that music about the Grange when the trees were in leaf.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“We are all born as storytellers. Our inner voice tells the first story we ever hear.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“I love my love with a b because she is peculiar.”
― Gertrude Stein, Narration: Four Lectures by Gertrude Stein

“It is the human habit to think in centuries from a grandparent to a grandchild because it just does take about a hundred years for things to cease to have the same meaning as they did before,”
― Gertrude Stein, Narration: Four Lectures by Gertrude Stein

“السرد وسيلة معرفة لأن السرد هو ما يمنح الأشياء شكلا”
― إبراهيم أصلان, انطباعات صغيرة حول حادث كبير

“This is the squalid, or moving, part of the story, and the scene changes. The people change, too. I'm still around, but from here on in, for reasons I'm not at liberty to disclose, I've disguised myself so cunningly that even the cleverest reader will fail to recognize me.”
― J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories

“Given neither talent, nor glory, but only tragedy, the story of our main character begins to unfold.”
― Tokyo Ghoul

“...a true narrative like time and tide must run its course and would respect no man.”
― Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

“Lumpini Park at night: love at its cheapest, but the incidence of HIV is said to be over 60 per cent. In the darkness: furtive movement on benches and on the grass, muted moans and whispers, rustlings of large animals in heat, the intensity of the atomic fusion of sec and death (highly addictive, they say).”
― John Burdett, Bangkok Tattoo

“But I will relate what happened with absolute honesty; that, perhaps, will help me understand it. After all, when one confesses to an act, one ceases to be an actor in it and becomes its witness, becomes a person that observes and narrates it and no longer the person that performed it.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, Brodie's Report

“Peut-on raconter le temps en lui-même, comme tel et en soi ? Non, en vérité, ce serait une folle entreprise. Un récit, où il serait dit : "Le temps passait, il s'écoulait, le temps suivait son cours" et ainsi de suite, jamais un homme sain d'esprit ne le tiendrait pour une narration. Ce serait à peu près comme si l'on avait l'idée stupide de tenir pendant une heure une seule et même note, ou un seul accord, et si l'on voulait faire passer cela pour de la musique. Car la narration ressemble à la musique en ce qu'elle "accomplit" le temps, qu'elle "l'emplit convenablement", qu'elle le "divise", qu'elle fait en sorte qu'"il s'y passe quelque chose" [...].”
― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

“L’écriture est un moyen de saisir l’instant. Pas comme dans l’expression carpe diem, parce que l’écriture en simultané, tout comme la prise frénétique de photos, masque le réel au moment où il se produit, empêche de vivre le voyage. L’écriture n’est pas une photo qui figerait à jamais une seconde d’intense singularité – quitte à la provoquer, comme le font parfois les photographes. Elle est un cliché à postériori, qui essaie d’embrasser tout le souvenir de l’instant. Dans le petit ou grand écart entre le temps racontant et le temps raconté se situe tout le jeu et tout l’enjeu des récits – ceux du réel ou ceux de la fiction. La poésie, elle qui ne nécessite pas la narration, permet de condenser les temps en une seule énonciation qui les contient tous.”
― Sylvie Bérard, Oubliez

“It is necessary at this point to recount what actually occurred, as opposed to what was generally supposed to have occurred, on that terrible evening when Lucas killed a man.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“What was to change many lives happened, and happened very fast in the next moments.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“If at that moment Clement had caught sight of the dog and had managed to capture him, the fates of a number of people in this story would have been entirely different. Such is the vast play of chance in human lives.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“I say "her", because I don't recall having been present, not in any meaningful sense of the word. I and the girl in the picture have ceased to be the same person. I am her outcome, the result of the life she once lived headlong; whereas she, if she can be said to exist at all, is composed only of what I remember. I have the better view - I can see her clearly, most of the time. But even if she knew enough to look, she can't see me at all.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“All history is fictionalised narration of an opinion and good authors keep coming up with new opinions on existing narrations. Those who have locked themselves in ideological echo chambers and thrown away the key consider any difference of opinion as an unwelcome perturbation on their sea of conforming tranquility.”
― R. N. Prasher

“Nervousness and excitement were two sides of the same coin, but Vere still couldn’t make heads or tails of what he was feeling.”
― Merry Knightly, (Self-Proclaimed) Menace To Society

“Dry your tears, woman, the boy will be found. Nobody can do him anything…” Gradually, the tears began to dry from Etusi’s eyes, thanks to Okokpujie’s words, a mighty force that swung the entire village to action. Pg.38”
― Obehi Peter Ewanfoh, Amende The Stream Water

“The language that we employ in internal and written communications with oneself contains complex thoughts. My written self-speech employs language that is more sophisticated than my rather crude internal dialogue employs. Language allows us to capture thoughts. The cerebral act of writing also unleashes additional thoughts as we link progressive sentences together in a thoughtful and logically sequential manner. The ability of written dialogues to marshal sophisticated language and impose organization over the composed thoughts in logical sentences and paragraphs acts to enhance our cognitive thought processes.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“The pride the duchess had felt seemed to leave her and become absorbed through the king’s eyes, where he picked it apart.”
― Tony Del Degan, The Plight of Steel

“There were hundreds of them, all dressed like silver dragons, all with long, streaming capes that looked like great wings, flapping and twirling as they fought.”
― Tony Del Degan, The Plight of Steel

“Voiceover Actress looking to work with independent authors at a low rate in order to build up my portfolio. E-mail me at: vo_darlene_@outlook.com to get in touch.

Have a wonderful say.”
― Darlene

“Stop letting fear leach into your voice,” Luca snaps from behind Rhiannon. “If the dragons think you’re a coward, you’ll be nothing but a name tomorrow.”

“She says,” Ridoc narrates, “inducing more fear.”
― Rebecca Yarros, Fourth Wing (Part 1 of 2) [Dramatized Adaptation]

“These people showed a marked increase in connections between parts of the frontal cortex associated with self-concept and parts of the brain associated with processing sensory and motor information. It’s hard to know what to really make of this, and it’s tricky to attribute emotions or insights to people based on functional brain images. But Williams’s theory is backed up by some other research. Well-connected brains in these areas, she said, tend to be pretty good at processing stressful information and making narrative and personal sense of it. In other words, these drunk-on-beauty people know how to tell themselves a story when something confusing happens. The single emotion they share is awe.”
― Florence Williams, Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey

“Cependant, toutes les histoires – je parle des vraies, hein, pas de celles où des ados à grande gueule se transforment en espions-ninjas, ou dont les protagonistes vieillissants renversent leur petite vie privilégiée sur un coup de tête et vont ouvrir une librairie d’occasion à Barcelone, où ils découvrent enfin l’amour – ont besoin de nous pour survivre. Les êtres humains sont les nuages d’où pleuvent les histoires, mais nous sommes également les éclats de verre qui en réfractent la lumière, qui en polarisent les rayons jusqu’à les rendre brûlants.”
― Michael Marshall Smith, La Vie ô combien ordinaire d'Hannah Green

“Narrative, in short. is more than literature, it is the way we understand our lives. If literature merely supplied entertainment, then it wouldn't be as important as it is. Great literature speaks to the deepest level of our humanity; it helps us better understand who we are. Narrative is not only the way we understand our personal and collective identities, it is the source of our ethics, our politics, and our religion. It is, as William James and Jerome Bruner assert, one of our two basic ways of thinking. Narrative isn't irrational -it can be criticized by rational argument- but it can't be derived from reason alone. Mythic (narrative) culture is not a subset of theoretic culture, nor will it ever be. It is older than theoretic culture and remains to this day an indispensable way of relating to the world.”
― Robert N. Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age