Quotes & Sayings About Narrative Perspective

Your partner may have injuries that you can't repair. Your partner may be trapped in a dark room without windows. Your life narrative might bring him more relief than an opiate. Some people make better windows than windows. Your kind words and enlightened perspective is a window of wonders to someone living in pain.
pg 43 — Michael Ben Zehabe

On a collective level, the mind-set "We are right and they are wrong" is particularly deeply entrenched in those parts of the world where conflict between two nations, races, tribes, religions, or ideologies is long-standing, extreme, and endemic. Both sides of the conflict are equally identified with their own perspective, their own "story," that is to say, identified with thought. Both are equally incapable of seeing that another perspective, another story, may exist and also be valid. Israeli writer Y. Halevi speaks of the possibility of "accommodating a competing narrative,"3 but in many parts of the world, people are not yet able or willing to do that. Both sides believe themselves to be in possession of the truth. Both regard themselves as victims and the "other" as evil, and because they have conceptualized and thereby dehumanized the other as the enemy, they can kill and inflict all kinds of violence on the other, even on children, without feeling their humanity and suffering. — Eckhart Tolle

There is no master narrative nor realist perspective to provide a background of social and historical facts. — Kathy Acker

The medieval world then is one in which not only is the scheme of the virtues enlarged beyond an Aristotelian perspective, but above all in which the connection between the distinctively narrative element in human life and the character of the vices comes to the forefront of consciousness and not only in biblical terms. — Alasdair MacIntyre

As readers, as people, we might not have the capacity to change the justice system. But as Dylan says in the book, we can change one person's perspective at a time. We can notice. We can speak up. We can teach this generation, my generation, that the way sexual assault is viewed and treated in this country is not okay, so that when it is our turn to step into the shoes of political office and criminal justice, we can continue changing the narrative from a place of power.
And more than anything, we can support. And we can empower. We can love.
We can be better. — Cora Carmack

The "new" Anglo-American feminist theory argues that too little mothering, and, in particular, the absence of mother-son connection, is what engenders both sexism and traditional masculinity in men. (...) This perspective positions mothering as central to feminist politics in its insistence that true and lasting gender equality will occur only when boys are raised as the sons of mothers. As the early feminist script of mother-son connection required the denial of the mother's power and the displacement of her identity as mother, the new perspective affirms the maternal and celebrates mother-son connection. In this, it rewrites the patriarchal and early feminist narrative to give (...) voice and presence to the mother and make mother-son connection central to the redesign of both traditional masculinity and the larger patriarchal culture. — Andrea O'Reilly

From its aptly noirish title on, Martin Preib's The Wagon has rightness of authenticity about it. From the perspective of a cop he fashions a compelling view of the Chicago Algren once called 'the dark city.' There's a unique quality to his essays which manage to be broodingly meditative even as their narrative drive keeps you turning pages. — Stuart Dybek

Taking photographs seems to be a means to express some kind of emotional, abstractive narrative. I look at the images that I'm most proud of like a film about the world the way I see it (or at least saw it at that moment, a perspective that seems to be ever-shifting and filled with self-doubt.) — Anton Yelchin

There remains a problem with race in America because of the church's failure to understand the issues from a biblical perspective."

"Rather than being called into a different community by Scripture, we see our broken communities as justified by Scripture."

"Rather than challenge the worldly status quo, religious groups perpetuate stereotypes, sectarianism, and schisms when accepting ethnic denominational identities- inverting Pentecost by reading in multiple languages unrecognized by listeners and offering separate worship services according to musical preference."

"Ultimately, our aim is to draw attention to the biblical narrative from which comes to the strength for the long road of reconciliation. — Joy Moore

The person you are (in total, at that moment in time) is what creates the story you're writing. It's infused in every piece of punctuation, in the plot, in the most minor character who crosses the page. It's all your voice. — Victor LaValle

The silencing of the Haitian Revolution is only a chapter within a narrative of global domination. It is part of the history of the West and it is likely to persist, even in attenuated form, as long as the history of the West is not retold in ways that bring forward the perspective of the world. — Michel-Rolph Trouillot

There's a bit more of a safe distance when you're making a narrative movie, a bit more perspective. Audiences can separate themselves from the harsh reality of the facts a little bit more and think: 'Okay, how do I consider this?' — Tom McCarthy

When we study the narrative of plants such as wheat and maize, maybe the purely evolutionary perspective makes sense. Yet in the case of animals such as cattle, sheep and Sapiens, each with a complex world of sensations and emotions, we have to consider how evolutionary success translates into individual experience. — Yuval Noah Harari

Simply raising the theme of animals in the Third Reich means that our narrative is no longer only an account of what human beings have done to one another, but also about our relations with the natural world. If,viewed against the magnitude and terror of historical events, our personal lives appear almost trivial, the lives of animals may seem more so, and even
to raise the subject can at first seem either insensitive or pedantic. At the
same time, this new dimension places the events in an even vaster perspective still, one in which even the greatest battles and horrendous
crimes can begin to fade into insignificance. This is the standpoint of evolutionary time, in which humankind itself may be no more than a
relatively brief episode. Perhaps the focus on animals may help us to find
a more harmonious balance between the personal, historic, and cosmic
levels, on which, simultaneously we conduct our lives. — Boria Sax

Mann was conscious of adopting different perspectives in different parts of the novella, but my guess is that there are plenty of passages in which the resonance of the words he chose struck him as exactly right (even though he didn't probe to discover exactly what tone or narrative device gave them that effect). — Philip Kitcher

If you think of even Tolstoy or a book like 'Anna Karenina,' you go from character to character, and each section is from the third person perspective of a different character, so you get to see the whole world a little more kaleidoscopically that way. That's traditional narrative manner, and I haven't done a book like that before, but I enjoyed it. — Jeffrey Eugenides

The scientific method," Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, "is nothing but the normal working of the human mind." That is to say, when the mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in corrrecting its mistakes.
Taking this point of view, we may conclude that science is not physics, biology, or chemistry
is not even a "subject"
but a moral imperative drawn from a larger narrative whose purpose is to give perspective, balance, and humility to learning. — Neil Postman

It is difficult to disturb the common usage of Korean that is bent to the perspective of a male-oriented society. Korean society is based on both a politics and history that have been disguised as a solid society of solid male poems, a solid written language, fixed rules of how to write literature, and a narrative language. — Kim Hyesoon

Narratives are the primary way in which we make sense of our lives, as opposed to, for example schema,cognition, beliefs, constructs. Definition of narrative include the important element of giving meaning to events and experiences over time by connecting them as a developing, continuing story. — Jacqui Stedmon

Instead of focusing on isolated objects and events, we can expand our fixed perspective and allow the deeper process (often taking the form of a mythic narrative of some sort) that is animating events to reveal itself. Instead of superimposing our limiting ideas and beliefs onto the waking dream, we can allow life to show its dreamlike nature to us. — Paul Levy

Narrative, however, has two kinds of time: first, its own real time, which like musical time defines its movement and presentation; and second, the time of its contents, which has a perspective quality that can vary widely, from a story in which the narrative's imaginary time is almost, or indeed totally coincident with its musical time, to one in which it stretches over light-years. — Thomas Mann