“As a cultural form, database represents the world as a list of items and it refuses to order this list. In contrast, a narrative creates a cause-and-effect trajectory of seemingly unordered items (events). Therefore, database and narrative are natural enemies. Competing for the same territory of human culture, each claims an exclusive right to make meaning out of the world.” WorldHumansFormOrderCultureCausesNaturalEnemyEffectsEventsClaimsRefuseListsNarrativeTerritoryContrastCompetingItemsExclusiveCause And EffectTrajectoryDatabasesNatural Enemies Author:Lev Manovich
“I believe a good writer can write a good book with any sort of character, in any sort of setting, but I prefer to write about the outsider. It might just be because I've been one (or perceived myself to be one) for so much of my life. But the simple fact of being marginalized immediately brings conflict to a story before the narrative even begins, and that's gold for a writer because it means that your character already has depth before events begin to unfold.” WritingBelieveMeanBookCharacterFactsStoriesMightI BelieveSimpleEventsConflictGoldDepthSettingSettingsNarrativeOutsidersGood BookGood WritersMarginalized Author:Charles de Lint
“Those who first invented and then named the constellations were storytellers. Tracing an imaginary line between a cluster of stars gave them an image and an identity. The stars threaded on that line were like events threaded on a narrative. Imagining the constellations did not of course change the stars, nor did it change the black emptiness that surrounds them. What it changed was the way people read the night sky.” PeopleWayFirstsNightCoursesStarsBlackLinesSkyEventsIdentityChangedNarrativeEmptinessSurroundImaginaryStorytellerConstellationsNight SkyClustersTracingImaginary Lines Book:And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos Source: And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos
“In constructing our narratives, we identify which particular events or experiences were formative or transformative. In telling our stories, we also claim some authority over our own experiences and their meanings.” StoriesEventsParticularAuthorityClaimsNarrative Author:Peg O'Connor
“The Da Vinci Code may well be the only novel ever written that begins with the word 'renowned'... I think what enabled the first word to tip me off that I was about to spend a number of hours in the company of one of the worst prose stylists in the history of literature was this. Putting curriculum vitae details into complex modifiers on proper names or definite descriptions is what you do in journalistic stories about deaths; you just don't do it in describing an event in a narrative... Why did I keep reading? Because London Heathrow is a long way from San Francisco International.” ThinkingWayFirstsWellsMayLongBookStoriesReadingLiteratureNamesLanguageHoursNumbersCompanyNovelWrittenWorstEventsComplexesInternationalDetailsLondonNarrativeCodeProseDescriptionDefiniteLong WaySan FranciscoDescribingCurriculumStylistJournalisticRenownedDa Vinci Code Author:Geoffrey K. Pullum
“This variety of objects will suspend, for some time, the course of the narrative; but the interruption will be censured only by those readers who are insensible to the importance of laws and manners, while they peruse, with eager curiosity, the transient intrigues of a court, or the accidental event of a battle.” LawCoursesHistoryEventsObjectsReaderBattleImportanceCourtCuriosityVarietyMannersNarrativeIntrigueRoman EmpireTransientInterruptionsInsensible Book:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“An ideology can provide a satisfying narrative that explains chaotic events and collective misfortunes in a way that flatters the virtue and competence of believers, while being vague or conspiratorial enough to withstand skeptical scrutiny.” WayEnoughVirtueEventsBelieverIdeologyNarrativeCollectivesMisfortunesSatisfyingVagueCompetenceSkepticalChaoticScrutiny Author:Steven Pinker
“There are a whole other range of sciences that must deal with the narrative reconstruction of the inordinately complex events of history that can occur but once in their detailed glory. And for those kinds of sciences, be it cosmology, or evolutionary biology, or geology, or palaeontology, the experimental methods, simplification, quantification, prediction and repetition of the experimental sciences don't always work. You have to go with the narrative, the descriptive methods of what? Of historians.” KindWholeDealsEventsGloryMethodComplexesNarrativeRangeBiologyHistorianRepetitionPredictionsCosmologyGeologyReconstructionSimplificationEvolutionary BiologyExperimental Science Author:Richard Lewontin
“Like an explorer returned from a distant planet or another dimension, Suki Kim has many extraordinary tales to tell, among them how different--and how awful--life is for those who live in North Korea. The devil is in the details here, for her gritty narrative focuses on everyday events to reveal how repression shapes daily life, even for the most privileged. Yet Kim also bears witness to that part of the human soul that no oppressor can ever claim.” HumansDifferentSoulLife IsEventsPlanetsBearsShapesDevilClaimsExtraordinaryEverydayDetailsTalesAwfulWitnessNarrativeDimensionsDaily LifePrivilegedKoreaHuman SoulNorth KoreaRepressionOppressorsExplorersKim Author:Carlos Eire
“The designation of the locality in one excludes the appearances narrated by the rest; the determination of time in another leaves no space for the narratives of his fellow-evangelists; the enumeration of a third is given without any regard to the events reported by his predecessors; lastly, among several appearances recounted by various narrators, each claims to be the last, and yet has nothing in common with the others. Hence nothing but wilful blindness can prevent the perception that no one of the narrators knew and presupposed what another records.” LastsGivenSpaceCommonRecordsAtheismEventsPerceptionDeterminationThirdsClaimsRegardFellowsVariousAppearancePositive AtheismNarrativeBlindnessPredecessorsNarratorsEvangelistsLocalityDesignation Author:David Friedrich Strauss
“I like to think traditional narrative can be subverted by an experiential narrative, by an immersion in the temporal event of the film and a a play with our expectations of that.” ThinkingPlayFilmEventsExpectationsTraditionalNarrativeImmersion Author:Rick Alverson
“I don't write non-fiction because I get bored. Some of my writing is autobiographical, but not the way readers imagine. I use my memory of settings, events and people. I weave history into my stories, but my narratives are made up.” PeopleWayWritingMadeStoriesUseMemoriesFictionImagineEventsReaderSettingSettingsNarrativeBoredNon Fiction Author:Sefi Atta
“The equivocations, the confusions, the contradictions. There's no way we can live through or comprehend something so big that happened so long ago. We've lost true history. But if we are willing to tolerate the contradictions, and if we suffer through events rather than ticking them off, we may at least get closer to understanding what happened than if we grip the handrail of a carefully polished and reassuringly heroic narrative.” IfsWayMayLongBigsSufferingLostUnderstandingHappenedEventsWillingConfusionNarrativeContradictionHeroicTolerateLong AgoPolished Author:Nicholson Baker
“Once we truly grasp the message of the New Testament, it is impossible to read the Old Testament again without seeing Christ on every page, in every story, foreshadowed or anticipated in every event and narrative. The Bible must be read as a whole, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelation, letting promise and fulfillment guide or expectations for what we will find there.” WholeStoriesChristianChristImpossibleSeeingEventsPromiseMessagesPagesExpectationsBibleGuidesNarrativeFulfillmentRevelationsTestamentNew TestamentGenesisOld Testament Author:Michael Horton
“When you're writing a book that is going to be a narrative with characters and events, you're walking very close to fiction, since you're using some of the methods of fiction writing. You're lying, but some of the details may well come from your general recollection rather than from the particular scene. In the end it comes down to the readers. If they believe you, you're OK. A memoirist is really like any other con man; if he's convincing, he's home. If he isn't, it doesn't really matter whether it happened, he hasn't succeeded in making it feel convincing.” IfsMenFeelsWritingBelieveWellsMayBookEndsMatterCharacterHomeLyingFictionHappenedEventsParticularReaderWalkingSceneMethodDetailsNarrativeConvincingWriting A BookRecollectionFiction Writing Author:Samuel Hynes
“To write a good memoir you must become the editor of your own life, imposing on an untidy sprawl of half-remembered events a narrative shape and an organizing idea. Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.” WritingArtIdeasHalfEventsShapesMemoirNarrativeRememberedEditorsInventingImposing Author:William Zinsser
“I had been thinking independently about our ability to forget things that happened, specifically, events that clearly were wrong, that crossed the line. It seemed to me during the 2000 election recount that the media's narrative was being orchestrated. Shockingly, after the Supreme Court decision, the media simply said, "Time to move on," end of reporting: "Here's the new story." And everyone forgot.” ThinkingSaidEndsStoriesMovingLinesAbilityDecisionForgetHappenedMediaEventsElectionCourtSupremeNarrativeSupreme CourtTime To Move OnCourt DecisionSimply Said Author:Robert Kane Pappas
“You could be attached to merely a description of a plant or a flower. Or a narrative of an event. Or rage at injustice. Isaiah and the other Hebrew prophets, in their rage, were being altogether attached - not at all detached, although as I think of the word "detachment," I also think of a sheet of paper, loose from its notebook, fluttering around somewhere in the wind trying to find its home again.” ThinkingTryingHomeEventsWindFlowerPaperPlantInjusticeRageNarrativeProphetDescriptionSheetsDetachmentNotebookDetachedHebrewFluttering Author:Gerald Stern
“If something produces an undue amount of pleasure or undue amount of displeasure, it's going to be judged differently and it's going to be introduced in your narrative with a different size, with a different development. So that is the next element to superimpose on the sequencing element. And in fact, that element is so powerful that very often it can trump the sequencing event, that the sequencing aspect.” IfsDifferentFactsNextPleasurePowerfulEventsProduceDevelopmentTrumpAmountElementsAspectSizeNarrativeJudgedDispleasureSequencing Author:Antonio Damasio
“In "Twilight," the narratives are more literal, and the event is much more spectacular. The pictures in "Beneath the Roses" are much more psychological and grounded in reality.” RealityEventsRosePsychologicalNarrativeTwilightGroundedSpectacularLiteral Author:Gregory Crewdson