Best reader & narrative Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Short fiction is the medium I love the most, because it requires that I bring everything I've learned about poetry - the concision, the ability to say something as vividly as possible - but also the ability to create a narrative that, though lacking a novel's length, satisfies the reader.”

Ability Fiction Novel Reader Mediums Narrative I've Learned Length Lacking

Author:Ron Rash

“Teaching Plato in Palestine shows how philosophical thinking can illuminate important topics-in particular, the problem of finding ways to engage people with opposed ideologies in fruitful debate. The lively narratives, based on the author's experiences of working with various groups interested in using philosophical tools to clarify their thought and action, will engage a wide range of readers.”

“The word story is intended to alert the reader to the fact that, however closely the narrative may fit the facts, the fictional process has been at work.”

Writing May Has Beens Facts Stories Process Reader Fit Narrative

Book:Anatomy of Restlessness: Selected Writings 1969-1989

Source: Anatomy of Restlessness: Selected Writings 1969-1989

“GraceQuest is a gripping story of one man's (and his family's) struggle with tremendous weakness and pain, but it is also a narrative theodicy--defense of God's goodness in spite of the undeniable reality of evil. . . . This is an honest and hard-hitting book about God's grace in and through tremendous loss of health and strength. Readers will find hope and help here if they are open to its message about the God-given 'strength to suffer well.'”

“Believing in fate has probably always arisen in part because of the delights and terrors of storytelling. We have to realize--to learn--that in life we are not the readers but the authors of our own narratives.”

Believe Realizing Fate Reader Terror Delight Storytelling Narrative

Author:Margaret Visser

“I've always thought that one of the things that the Internet and the gaming world permits as a narrative technique is to not tell the story from beginning to end - to tell stories sideways, to give alternative possibilities that the reader can, in a way, choose between.”

World Way Giving Ends Stories Possibility Reader Internet Technique Alternatives Narrative Permit Gaming Sideways

Author:Salman Rushdie

“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.”

“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.”

Law Courses History Events Objects Reader Battle Importance Court Curiosity Variety Manners Narrative Intrigue Roman Empire Transient Interruptions Insensible

Book:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“The simple circumstantial narrative (did such a narrative exist) of the ruin of a single town, of the misfortunes of a single family, might exhibit an interesting and instructive picture of human manners; but the tedious repetition of vague and declamatory complaints would fatigue the attention of the most patient reader.”

Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“If Ive vividly laid out the narrative, the reader will come to his own conclusions.”

Ifs Reader Conclusion Narrative

Author:Rick Atkinson

“To be simple, I would say a story has to have a bit of narrative, if only "she says," and then enough of a creation of a different time and place to transport the reader.”

Ifs Different Enough Stories Bits Simple Creation Reader Narrative Transport Different Times

Author:Lydia Davis

“I am often talking about the ideas collected in Normal Life in contexts that are not academic, or that are full of people who are not primarily engaging as theorists or theory-readers. Being able to make ideas visual, especially critical ideas about movements that can be difficult to hear because of attachments we have to certain national narratives, or because of ways that we see ourselves, is especially useful.”

People Way Ideas Able Certain Difficult Talking Movement Theory Reader Normal Critical Narrative Visuals Attachment Academic Engaging Normal Life Theorists

Author:Dean Spade

“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.”

People Way Writing Made Stories Use Memories Fiction Imagine Events Reader Setting Settings Narrative Bored Non Fiction

Author:Sefi Atta

“I always write too long in the beginning, then it is a matter of going through it over and over again on subsequent drafts, looking for anything that slows down the narrative. It can be hard, cutting out parts I love, but I try to make the book as tight as possible so that the reader doesn't get bored.”

Writing Trying Long Book Matter Hard Cutting Reader Narrative Bored Slow Down

Author:Chevy Stevens

“The decision to write in prose instead of poetry is made more by the readers than by writers. Almost no one is interested in reading narrative in verse.”

Writing Made Reading Decision Reader Narrative Prose Poetry Is Verses Bedtime

Author:Robert Morgan

“I try to write about complex issues--young people in an adult world-- full of irony and contradiction in a narrative style that relies heavily on suspense with a texture rich in emotion and imagery. I take a great deal of satisfaction in using popular forms-- the adventure, the mystery, the thriller-- so as to hold my reader with the sheer pleasure of a good story. At the same time I try to resolve my books with an ambiguity that compels engagement. In short, I want my readers to feel, to think, sometimes to laugh. But most of all I want them to enjoy a good read.”

“The inherent non-linearity of the digital allows for more input from others, including the subject and reader as collaborators. The top-down, bedtime-style story is of limited use. A non-linear narrative that allows for increased complexity and depth, and encourages both subject and reader to have greater involvement, will eventually emerge more fully from the digital environment. This, in a sense, is the more profound democratization of media.”

“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.”

“All your clear and pleasing sentences will fall apart if you don't keep remembering that writing is linear and sequential, that logic is the glue that holds it together, that tension must be maintained from one sentence to the next and from one paragraph to the next and from one section to the next, and that narrative - good old-fashioned storytelling - is what should pull your readers along without their noticing the tug.”

Ifs Should Writing Together Remember Fall Next Clear Reader Logic Sentences Storytelling Narrative Tension Sections Old Fashioned Falling Apart Noticing Paragraph Linear Glue One Sentence

Author:William Zinsser

“One of the things that bugs me about the Western Literary Tradition is that the conventions of narrative in particular seem to confine the stories you can tell about characters to tropes of bone-headed action and old models of psychological realism. And as readers, too, we have been conditioned to understand characters as - and forgive me for saying it out loud - what the market says they should be. Namely, safe, clean, proper.”

“It is hard to create a first-person narrator that can be a child and yet is able to take in enough information for the narrative to be legible to the reader.”

Firsts Children Persons Hard Enough Able Information Reader Narrative First Person Narrators

Author:Akhil Sharma

“Unlike other books or TV shows or sometimes life, my narrative worlds are stripped of implicit moral centers. There is only what you bring. That makes the characters risky in every way and the narrative, a journey of change for the reader. But I make the journey as fun as I can.”

World Way I Can Book Sometimes Character Shows Fun Moral Journey Tvs Reader Narrative Tv Shows Implicit Sometimes In Life

Author:Chris Abani

“I didn't think of the narrative as making a judgment. It didn't occur to me the reader would either, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible there would be that risk.”

Thinking Mean Would Be Risk Reader Judgment Narrative

Author:Rachel Kushner

“The narrative image has more dimensions than the painted image - literature is more complex than painting. Initially, this complexity represents a disadvantage, because the reader has to concentrate much more than when they're looking at a canvas. It gives the author, on the other hand, the opportunity to feel like a creator: they can offer their readers a world in which there's room for everyone, as every reader has their own reading and vision.”

World Giving Feels Hands Reading Literature Opportunity Rooms Vision Painting Reader Offers Complexes Creator Narrative Complexity Dimensions Canvas Disadvantages

Author:Dumitru Tepeneag

“It's pretty easy to think of the idea of a story, and maybe even to write a scene or two, but understanding the ebb and flow of a narrative, where to leave the little clues your protagonist (and reader) need, while playing fair, takes a lot more skill and patience than you might think.”

Thinking Needs Writing Littles Two Ideas Stories Might Easy Understanding Reader Scene Skills Fairs Flow Narrative Clue Protagonists Ebb And Flow

Author:Dennis Green

“It's actually not very hard to re-set between the adult novels and the ones for younger readers. The narrative voices are very similar, the smartass attitude, the environmental battles. Kids love books that are irreverent and challenge authority, when authority is arbitrary, greedy or foolish. They also love it when you make fun of grownups, and I've spent my whole life as a writer doing that.”

“Because I think of novels as collaborative enterprises between the writer and the reader, all of my novels so far have ending with endings that maybe point in more than one direction, and that seems important to me because it seems important to me that after you've invested twenty or thirty hours of your imaginative life into this narrative that you have some stake in how it ends.”

Thinking Important Ends Seems Hours Novel Reader Twenties Narrative Thirty Enterprise Stakes Imaginative One Direction

Author:Emily Barton

“It's a beautiful aspect of narrative construction, hunting for the right images and metaphors to render our character's hearts/minds/souls as though they're ecosystems, full-fledged settings for a reader to inhabit like a place.”

Mind Heart Soul Character Beautiful Reader Aspect Metaphor Setting Settings Narrative Construction Hunting Ecosystems

Author:Joshua Mohr

“When I was a child, I used to go wandering - disused railway-lines, old barns, dry-stone walls, strangely Pre-Raphaelite copses - it's much more fun to wander than to be guided, and you could do it in those days with freedom and without paranoia. In similar fashion, I try to allow the reader room to wander, even to meander, to almost lose themselves and their grip of the narrative.”

Trying Children Used Fun Loses Lines Rooms Fashion Wall Reader Stones Wander Narrative Dry Paranoia Railway Barns Stone Walls

Author:Suhayl Saadi

“As a reader, I notice political views regardless of whether or not the book is fiction. What annoys me is when said views do nothing to advance the narrative.”

Said Book Political Views Fiction Reader Narrative Annoying Political View

Author:Jen Lancaster

“I do insist on making what I hope is sense so there's always a coherent narrative or argument that the reader can follow.”

Literature Reader Argument Narrative

Author:Howard Nemerov

“There are certain things in 'Twilight'... As much as I'm proud of that movie and I do like it, I feel like maybe I brought too much of myself to the character. I feel like I really know Bella now. But most readers feel like they know Bella because it's a first-person narrative.”

Knows Feels Firsts Persons Character Certain Too Much Reader Proud Narrative Twilight First Person First Person Narrative

Author:Kristen Stewart

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