“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
“There are many things worth telling that are not quite narrative. And eternity itself possesses no beginning, middle or end. Fossils, arrowheads, castle ruins, empty crosses: from the Parthenon to the Bo Tree to a grown man's or woman's old stuffed bear, what moves us about many objects is not what remains but what has vanished. There comes a time, thanks to rivers, when a few beautiful old teeth are all that remain of the two-hundred-foot spires of life we call trees. There comes a river, whose current is time, that does a similar sculpting in the mind.” MenMindDoeTwoEndsBeautifulMovingTreeFeetMiddleObjectsBearsHundredRiversCrossesEmptyEternityRemainsCurrentsTeethRuinsThanksNarrativeFossilsCastlesThere Comes A TimeGrown ManSculptingAll That RemainsSpiresParthenon Author:David James Duncan
“Objects let you tell a narrative that encompasses everybody. Texts don't.” ObjectsNarrative Author:Neil MacGregor
“[I have a] way of making narrative sculpture, where first you make a text and out of that text you make objects. [...] I start with a story and then I make sculpture from that story, it's just that the stories become more and more elaborate.” WayFirstsStoriesObjectsNarrativeSculpture Author:Matthew Barney
“The close-up has no equivalent in a narrative fashioned of words. Literature is totally lacking in any working method to enable it to isolate a single vastly enlarged detail in which one face comes forward to underline a state of mind or stress the importance of a single detail in comparison with the rest. As a narrative device, the ability to vary the distance between the camera and the object may be a small thing indeed, but it makes for a notable difference between cinema and oral or written narrative, in which the distance between language and image is always the same.” MindMayStatesFacesLiteratureLanguageDifferencesAbilityWrittenObjectsImportanceStressCamerasMethodDistanceDetailsNarrativeCinemaComparisonDevicesState Of MindLackingSmall ThingsVaryNotable Author:Italo Calvino
“Before people outside of the Western European tradition started asking to be in there, the people who were accumulating objects for the museum were perfectly satisfied with the narrative they were constructing.” PeopleObjectsTraditionAskingWesternSatisfiedNarrativeMuseums Author:Kerry James Marshall
“For myself, the only way I know how to make a book is to construct it like a collage: a bit of dialogue here, a scrap of narrative, an isolated description of a common object, an elaborate running metaphor which threads between the sequences and holds different narrative lines together.” KnowsWayBookDifferentRunningTogetherBitsLinesCommonKnow HowObjectsMetaphorDialogueNarrativeDescriptionIsolatedThreadConstructsSequenceScrapCollages Author:Hilary Mantel