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Narrators Quotes

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Narrators Quotes

“Apparently I am what is known as an Unreliable Narrator, though of course if you believe everything you're told you deserve whatever you get.”

Narrators Unreliable Narrators

Book:Transition

Source: Transition

“When you meet a dark angel don't you ever for one minute believe they are bad because they have faced the worst demons and lived to guide you through yours. It really isn't an easy job they have been asked to do, but then neither was standing on the front line during the war in heaven.”

“Narrators may go where they please.”

Writing Narrators

Book:The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home

Source: The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home

“And [Moby Dick's narrator] is so very smart, so very smart indeed, and so gifted with words, so very gifted, that at the right time he'll make you forget his presence, just to signal, at a certain point, that he was there all the time: and that he is actually you, a narrator to the troubled but no less amusing, and beautiful, human existence.”

Narrators Narrator Moby Dick Herman Melville

Book:The underrated narrator: The important role Ishmael plays in Moby Dick

Source: The underrated narrator: The important role Ishmael plays in Moby Dick

“My narrators tend to be women with low self-esteem, so I can send them to charm school.”

I Can Self School Self Esteem Lows Esteem Charm Low Self Esteem Narrators

Author:Elinor Lipman

“I go straight from thinking about my narrator to being him.”

Thinking Writing Narrators

Book:The Outsiders

Source: The Outsiders

“Using a dog as a narrator has limitations and it has advantages. The limitations are that a dog cannot speak. A dog has no thumbs. A dog can't communicate his thoughts except with gestures.”

Speak Dog Advantage Communicate Limitation Gestures Thumbs Narrators

Author:Garth Stein

“The third person narrator, instead of being omniscient, is like a constantly running surveillance tape.”

Persons Running Thirds Tape Surveillance Narrators Omniscient Third Person

Author:Andrew Vachss

“When the reader and one narrator know something the other narrator does not, the opportunities for suspense and plot development and the shifting of reader sympathies get really interesting.”

Knows Doe Opportunity Interesting Development Reader Suspense Plot Shifting Get Real Really Interesting Narrators

Author:Sara Zarr

“I always have to remember that I am the narrator, but it doesn't have to be about me. A lot of songwriting is about trying to use what part of me is valid in telling the story. I don't want to overcook it, you know? Sometimes it seems that's really where the work is.”

Knows Want Trying Sometimes Stories Use Seems Remember Songwriting Narrators

Author:Ryan Adams

“The text moves like a small crustacean with compound eye and complex nervous system; throbbing, involuted, it becomes a parasite on a different body, animal, using ‘filiform protrusions through which it sucks the vital juices of its host.’ Parasite or creature in mutation on the shore, torrid / delirium: mordant mortality, systematic competition the narrator against the I, leaking gas, a lapse of memory against a promise, an inset in a book. A muscular, involuntary bulging in the breast, circling all its inner surface: mesoblast: visceral.”

Source: The Blue Books: A Book, Turn of a Pang, French Kiss, Or, A Pang's Progress

“I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other. I may credit the seductive influence of an old vintage upon the narrator for the beginning of it, and my own skeptical incredulity during the days that followed for the balance of the strange tale.”

May Stories My Own Influence Strange Balance Credit Tales Skeptical Seductive Vintage Narrators Incredulity

Book:TARZAN OF THE APES SERIES - Complete Collection: 25 Novels in One Volume (Illustrated): The Return of Tarzan, The Beasts of Tarzan, The Son of Tarzan, Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar, Jungle Tales of Tarzan, Tarzan the Untamed, Tarzan and the Golden Lion, Tarzan the Terrible and many more

Source: TARZAN OF THE APES SERIES - Complete Collection: 25 Novels in One Volume (Illustrated): The Return of Tarzan, The Beasts of Tarzan, The Son of Tarzan, Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar, Jungle Tales of Tarzan, Tarzan the Untamed, Tarzan and the Golden Lion, Tarzan the Terrible and many more

“These types of films that are psychologically sort of dark at times, I find extremely exciting to do because there's always something to think about. There's nothing more boring than to show up on set and say a line and know that your character means exactly what they say. It's interesting to have an unreliable narrator in a film and that's what both of those films have been.”

Thinking Knows Mean Has Beens Character Shows Film Lines Dark Interesting Type Exciting Boring Unreliable Narrators

Author:Leonardo DiCaprio

“Fatal human malice is the staple of narrators, original sin the mother-fluid of historians. But it is a risky enterprise to have to write of virtue.”

Writing Humans Mother Sin Virtue Originals Enterprise Historian Malice Fluid Original Sin Staples Narrators

Book:Schindler's List

Source: Schindler's List

“And it [Fight Club novel] was written so general that my father thought I was writing about his father, and my boss thought I was writing about his boss. People really put themselves, you know, in the shoes of the narrator.”

People Knows Writing Fighting Father Novel Written Shoes Clubs Boss Narrators Fight Club Novel

Author:Chuck Palahniuk

“A vivid portrait of a teenage girl and her family in disarray. Meredith is a wonderful narrator, witty, feisty, full of yearning, and the story she tells is as complicated as life itself. This is a richly satisfying novel.”

Stories Girl Novel Wonderful Witty Complicated Satisfying Yearning Portraits Teenage Vivid Narrators Teenage Girl Feisty Disarray

Author:Margot Livesey

“The only difference between the narrator of contemporary affairs and the ordinary historian is that moral judgments about the present provoke fiercer reactions and have more immediately practical implications than moral judgments about the past.”

Past Differences Moral Judgment Ordinary Affair Practicals Reactions Contemporary Historian Provoking Implications Narrators Moral Judgment

Author:Geoffrey Barraclough

“As a writer I'm not an explainer, really. I'm a narrator. I mistrust explanation.”

Explanation Mistrust Narrators

Author:D. T. Max

“To what or whom does Lizzie Harris direct the imperative title of her startling first book, Stop Wanting? To the reader, the narrator, to desire itself, or to lack? This is a work of complexly, ambiguously layered narratives and identities. The opening poem asserts I want to say what happened / but am suspicious of stories. These lines become an ars poetica for the whole of this painful and exceptional collection in which the unspeakable is stubbornly confronted by a searing eloquence. This is a commanding debut.”

“Lauren Kirshner creates a first-person narrator you never stop rooting for. . . . [Where We Have to Go] highlights Kirshner as a new novelist to watch. A very strong, original debut.”

Firsts Persons Strong Watches Originals Novelists Very Strong First Person Highlights Debut Narrators Lauren

Author:Zoe Whittall

“Every Day Is for the Thief is a vivid, episodic evocation of the truism that you can't go home again; but that doesn't mean you're not free to try. A return to his native Nigeria plunges Cole's charming narrator into a tempest of chaos, contradiction, and kinship in a place both endearingly familiar and unnervingly strange. The result is a tale that engages and disturbs.”

Trying Mean Home Results Strange Return Chaos Tales Familiar Native Contradiction Thieves Charming Vivid Nigeria Plunge Tempest Kinship Narrators Truism

Author:Billy Collins

“The Watch is a powerful tale, courageous both in concept and creation: an ancient tale made modern, passed through different narrators in extraordinary shape-shifting prose that makes this not just an important novel, but a remarkable read.”

Made Important Different Powerful Watches Novel Modern Creation Shapes Concepts Extraordinary Ancient Tales Prose Remarkable Courageous Shifting Narrators

Author:Aminatta Forna

“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.”

“It is vital that there is a narrator figure whom people believe. That's why I never do commercials. If I started saying that margarine was the same as motherhood, people would think I was a liar.”

People Ifs Thinking Believe Figures Motherhood Liars Narrators

Author:David Attenborough

“Philip Galanes has fashioned a novel both bleak and funny about a young man's struggle to sort out his troubled love: the too-strong love for his mother, the too-weak love for his suicidal father, and the all-consuming love of anonymous sexual encounters. Pointed and acute, this story tells of the narrator's many betrayals of others and their many betrayals of him. It exists in an uncomfortable moral space where the humor of terrible things sometimes outweighs, but never obscures, their poignancy.”

“We want a sense that an important character, like a narrator, is reliable. We want to believe that a character is not playing ages or being coy or being manipulative, but is telling the truth to the best of his or her ability...We do not wish to be crudely manipulated...We want to be massaged by a masseur, not whapped by a carpet beater.”

Want Believe Important Character Age Wish Ability Telling The Truth Carpet Narrators Manipulative

Author:Anne Lamott

“If you feel that there's the author and then the character, then the book is not working. People have a habit of identifying the author with the narrator, and you can't, obviously, be all of the narrators in all of your books, or else you'd be a very strange person indeed.”

People Ifs Feels Persons Book Character Strange Habit Identifying Narrators Strange Person

Author:Margaret Atwood

“You could tell 'The Handmaid's Tale' from a male point of view. People have mistakenly felt that the women are oppressed, but power tends to organise itself in a pyramid. I could pick a male narrator from somewhere in that pyramid. It would interesting.”

People Felt Interesting Views Picks Males Point Of View Tales Oppressed Pyramids Narrators Handmaids

Author:Margaret Atwood

“I am somebody who creates images, with my perspectives, fascinations and my instincts as a narrator. You have to activate the audience's imagination. If you are just giving them scientific results, they would forget the film in five minutes flat.”

Ifs Giving Film Imagination Forget Results Audience Five Minutes Perspective Instinct Flats Five Minutes Fascination Narrators Activate

Author:Werner Herzog

“If you just go get one of these little fine arts degrees or writing program degrees, it never forces you to confront your responsibility as narrator, whereas any of the social sciences make you at look the interaction between the storyteller and story.”

Ifs Writing Looks Littles Art Stories Force Social Responsibility Fine Degrees Program Interaction Storyteller Fine Arts Social Science Narrators Arts Degrees

Author:Dorothy Allison

“Usually when I finish the draft of a book, I'm sure I'll never write another one. I'm just that tired and sick of myself. But then another idea starts percolating. It usually begins with the narrator's name, then some idea that intrigues me about her life or situation. I try to ignore it as long as I can, because I know when I start writing, I'll be right back into it, every single day. But eventually, I just have to. It's a compulsion!”

Knows Writing Trying Long I Can Book Ideas Names Situation Sick Tired Intrigue Compulsion Narrators

Author:Sarah Dessen

“I learned capacity for self-reflection very early, finding it through interior monologues that books are so good at and that visual media is so bad at because it's so boring - nothing's happening. In a book, you can be inside the narrator's head for 50 pages, and nothing needs to happen. Then you learn to be inside your own head without something needing to happen. It's a very good antidote to a crazy, restless, "what's next?" culture - that you can just be in your own head and nothing is happening except that this is a rich place. I love that.”

“When someone walks in and you say "a six-foot-tall man," you miss the opportunity to describe what a six-foot-tall man would look like to your narrator, because how the narrator describes a six-foot-tall man says more about the narrator than about the man.”

Men Looks Opportunity Walks Feet Missing He Man Six Tall Narrators

Author:Chuck Palahniuk

“I really believe that readers are smart and sophisticated enough to realize that the author is not the narrator of his novels.”

Believe Enough Realizing Novel Reader Smart Sophisticated Narrators

Author:Bret Easton Ellis

“I'm really shocked when critics get morally outraged at my fiction because they think I'm condoning what's going on. I never come in as the author and say, "Hey, okay. I'm interrupting the narrator here. I'm Bret Easton Ellis, and I'm the author."”

Thinking Fiction Okay Critics Hey Shocked Outraged Narrators Interrupting

Author:Bret Easton Ellis

“I personally just want to do as many different things as I can do, whether it's comedy, drama, science fiction, horror, narrator... You've got a documentary, I've got a voice. Animated films. Big films, small films.”

Want I Can Different Bigs Film Voice Can Do Fiction Comedy Drama Horror Science Fiction Different Things Documentaries Animated Narrators Animated Films

Author:Colin Farrell

“I used to be a narrator for bad mimes.”

Used Used To Be Narrators Mime

Author:Steven Wright

“You can do everything differently in a novel. Hero narrates the novel; we're in his head. You're hearing all his thought processes and you're hearing him call himself out on his bad behavior. You don't have the benefit of that narrator in a movie. What you see a character do, very often, becomes that much more important because you don't have him editorializing it for you.”

Important Character Process Can Do Novel Hero Behavior Benefits Hearing Narrators Thought Process Bad Behavior

Author:Jonathan Tropper

“I have no policy, for or against: only a personal style. Which is to say, I use them when I think it's appropriate to; for example, an internal monologue by a locquacious and verbose narrator is more likely to be larded with adverbs than an exchange of instant messages between cops at a crime scene.”

Thinking Use Style Crime Policy Example Scene Messages Instant Appropriate Internals Cop Monologues Narrators Personal Style Adverbs

Author:Charles Stross

“Early on, I settled on the first-person strategy as a way to deal with exposition and world-description issues. As long as the book is, it could have been far longer had I gone with an omniscient third-person narrator, or multiple point-of-view characters, since either of those would have enabled me to impart much more detailed information about the history and geography of the world.”

“We see everything from the narrator's point of view, so exposition about the world is limited to what impinges directly on him and the story he's telling. Considering how old the world is, we learn very little about its history, which I think is a good thing.”

Thinking World Littles Stories Views Good Things Point Of View Considering Narrators

Author:Neal Stephenson

“So a lot of what you see in the Baroque Cycle is me wanting to be one of those guys. In the case of Anathem, I needed something that was more formal, less flashy, as if it had been translated from the classical language of another planet, but enlivened with slang terms that a teenage narrator would enjoy throwing around.”

Ifs Guy Language Enjoy Term Cases Planets Needed Cycles Throwing Formal Teenage Narrators Slang Baroque Flashy

Author:Neal Stephenson

“When the narrator feels like an octopus, when he says his limbs are starting to multiply, he means he has inklings of orders of perception beyond his individual body.”

Feels Mean Body Order Individual Perception Starting Limbs Narrators Octopus

Author:Ben Lerner

“I am voice actor Roger Craig Smith. You may know me as Batman, Captain America, Sonic the Hedgehog, Ezio from Assassin's Creed, Transformers: RID, or narrator of “Say Yes To the Dress” (among many other things). AMA!”

Knows May America Actors Voice Dresses Creeds Know Me Captains Roger Assassins Narrators Hedgehogs Sonic The Hedgehog

Author:Roger Craig Smith

“I think every first-person narrator in a novel should be compromised. I prefer that word to unreliable.”

Thinking Should Firsts Persons Novel First Person Unreliable Narrators

Author:Charles Palliser

“But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands.”

Want Mind May Doe Hands Deeds Debate Narrators Deeds And Words

Author:Michel-Rolph Trouillot

“I think first-person narrators should be complex, because otherwise the first-person is too shallow and predictable. I like a first-person narrator who can't totally be trusted.”

Thinking Should Firsts Persons Complexes Trusted Shallow Predictable First Person Narrators

Author:Rick Moody

“I was taken in the Spirit to the burning bush on Mount Horeb, Moses' "first ascension," and allowed to witness the encounter he had with the Lord there. Throughout the visitation, I was enabled to know and feel the thoughts and emotions of Moses' inner being. ... There was a Holy Narrator beside me who helped me understand what I saw and heard, and he made references to relevant passages of Scripture. There were other Biblical figures also present - Joshua, Samuel, David, and even the Lord Jesus were there.”

“I didn't set out to write a book with no real male characters, but men were not important to my narrator, who was much more interested in maternal and pseudo-maternal love, so they were unimportant to me. I didn't even notice the lack of men in the story until I finished it. But once I did notice it, I was kind of delighted. Apparently, my subconscious is totally sexist.”

Men Writing Kind Important Book Real Character Stories Males Finished Subconscious Delighted Unimportant Sexist Pseudo Narrators Maternal Love

Author:Janice Erlbaum

“I just respect audiences to understand that that's what goes on in movies. I just try to make movies that respect the intelligence of the audience. Respect that they understand that the narrator is always unreliable and respect that they understand that the medium can do whatever it wants.”

Want Trying Can Do Audience Goes On Mediums Unreliable Narrators

Author:Guy Maddin