Quotes & Sayings About Narrators

I very much like the idea of the unreliable narrator. Shaping my fictions as monologues - by introducing the "I" - allows me to be as unreliable as I like. — Norman Lock

I'm starting to think my narrators' sentences are getting too big for them, and they are getting to sound a bit samey and, more disturbingly, a bit too much like me. — Anne Enright

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. — Margaret Atwood

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. — Iain M. Banks

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." — Bret Easton Ellis

CUSTOMER: I'd like to buy this audiobook.
BOOKSELLER: Great.
CUSTOMER: Only, I don't really like this narrator.
BOOKSELLER: Oh.
CUSTOMER: Do you have a selection of narrators to choose from? Ideally, I'd like Benedict Cumberbatch — Jen Campbell

In fiction, especially in texts that are framed by a storytelling situation, aporia is a favourite device of narrators to arouse curiosity in their audience, or to emphasize the extraordinary nature of the story they are telling. It is often combined with another figure of rhetoric, "aposiopesis", the incomplete sentence or unfinished utterance, usually indicated on the page by a trail of dots ... — David Lodge

I'm definitely very interested in doing female narrators that aren't typically feminine or emotional or soft - especially teenage girls - because I have such a hard time relating to so many of them that I read. They feel psychologically cuter to me than I ever was. — Andrea Seigel

One naturally identifies to some extent with an "I" female narrator going through something that you recognize whether you've gone through it or not. — Ann Goldstein

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. — Neal Stephenson

The story of my family ... changes with the teller. — Jennifer Haigh

Very often, or perhaps more often, and even in very good collections - even in some of the best collections ever written, I would argue - it's because our "voicier" writers hew so closely to one given set of dictional tics that we as readers can't read the books all the way through in a single sitting, because if we did, the stories and their narrators would all start to bleed together. — Roy Kesey

My first four books, from 'Fight Club' to 'Choke,' dealt with personal identity issues. The crises the narrators found themselves in were generated by themselves. — Chuck Palahniuk

But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past
or more accurately, pastness
is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past." p. 15
" ... 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." p. 153
Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) — Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Narrators are often unreliable, and part of the reader's pleasure is figuring out what's really true. The — Lisa Cron

First-person narrators is the way I know how to write a book with the greatest power and chance of artistic success. — Anne Rice

A miracle signifies nothing more than an event ... the cause of which cannot be explained by another familiar instance, or ... which the narrator is unable to explain. — Baruch Spinoza

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. — Michel-Rolph Trouillot

I see people sometimes who remind me of my narrators. — Lydia Davis

I'm starting to think that pure truth is impossible, and that all narrators and all people are at least a little unreliable. — Susan Juby

For years, I've written narrators who aren't gender-identified. When I do autobiographical stuff, that's different, obviously. But I've always tried to keep my songs as potentially not a man's thing. — John Darnielle

Well, there's good fiction. There are wonderful books, and yes, it's good to read them. Maybe if you've read a lot of fiction, you reach this stage of satiation, and you start thinking well, what's the point, but then you talk to people who've read barely any, and you realize that things you take for granted if you've read a lot of fiction - unreliable narrators, how language frames your perception of people - things that seem obvious to the point of banality, except they're not to people who aren't in the habit of reading fiction. — Helen DeWitt

In the end, history, especially British history with its succession of thrilling illuminations, should be, as all her most accomplished narrators have promised, not just instruction but pleasure. — Simon Schama

WARNING:
The following is a transcript of a digital recording. In certain places, the audio quality was poor, so some words and phrases represent the author's best guesses. Where possible, illustrations of important symbols mentioned in the recording have been added. Background noises such as scuffling, hitting, and cursing by the two speakers have not been transcribed The author makes no claims for the authenticity of the recording. It seems impossible that the two young narrators are telling the truth, but you, the reader, must decide for yourself. — Rick Riordan

In the end, the tenses of the verbs settled into a common groove, the persons of the narrators, first and third (the latter with so many variants and identities), became one, and events thronged toward a day that began uncertainly and remained undecided, with a light gray film covering the sky. — Filip Florian

I wanted to do a collection where the narrator is constant throughout, so that there's a little unity. — Arthur Bradford

Filmmakers who use narrators pay a price for taking the easy way: narrated films date far more quickly than films without narrators. — Bruce Jackson

evangelism can never be only proclamation or invitation, for it begins logically (even if not always chronologically) in allowing ourselves to be narrated by that story. Apart from our own formation into that story through baptism, worship, and the various practices and patterns of ecclesial life, we do not have the capacity to be faithful "rememberers" of the story, much less narrators or "counternarrators" of the story to others. — Bryan P. Stone

It is rare and almost impossible for a novel to have only one narrator. — Mario Vargas-Llosa

If you read novels of the 19th century, they're pretty experimental. They take lots of chances; they seem to break a lot of rules. You've got omniscient narrators lecturing at times to the reader in first person. If you go back to the earliest novels, this is happening to a wild extent, like 'Tristram Shandy' or 'Don Quixote'. — Jennifer Egan

I chose the title Dogwalker because that describes me pretty well. I spend a lot of time walking around with my dogs. I'd say the narrator is me in an alternate universe. — Arthur Bradford

All of the narration in 'Smile' is first-person. Most of the books that I grew up reading had first-person narrators for some reason. My diaries were written in this voice, and since this story is autobiographical, it just felt like a natural extension. — Raina Telgemeier

They say the eyes are the windows to our soul; glass gateways that do little to conceal our true self. Yet, for me, they're also the narrators of our heart and give insight to our well-kept secrets... secrets I wanted to remain hidden. — K.M. Golland

As a writer I'm not an explainer, really. I'm a narrator. I mistrust explanation. — D.T. Max

My biggest lesson ... was to try and create narrators that were believable ... so the listener becomes really invested in the story or the song. — Kristian Bush

Narrators may go where they please. — Catherynne M Valente

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. — David Friedrich Strauss

Oh Beck, I love reading your e-mail. Learning your life. And I am careful; I always mark new messages unread so that you won't get alarmed. My good fortune doesn't stop there; You prefer e-mail. You don't like texting. So this means that I am not missing out on all that much communication. You wrote an "essay" for some blog in which you stated that "e-mails last forever. You can search for any word at any time and see everything you ever said to anyone about that one word. Texts go away." I love you for wanting a record. I love your records for being so accessible and I'm so full of you, your calendar of caloric intake and hookups and menstrual moments, your self-portraits you don't publish, your recipes and exercises. You will know me soon too, I promise. — Caroline Kepnes

First-person narrators can't die, so as long as we keep telling the story of our own lives we're safe. Ha bloody fucking Ha. — Pat Barker

We commonly do not remember that it is ... always the first person that is speaking. — Henry David Thoreau

I really believe that readers are smart and sophisticated enough to realize that the author is not the narrator of his novels. — Bret Easton Ellis

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. — Rick Moody

Do you remember being born? Only a few can say they do and not be caught immediately in the lie, and most of them are wizards. I, of course, remember it perfectly. Certain benefits are granted to narrators as part of the hiring package, to compensate for our irregular hours and unsafe working conditions. — Catherynne M Valente

I think every narrator is an unreliable narrator. In its classic definition - an unreliable narrator is one who reveals something they don't know themselves to be revealing. We all do that. — Rob Roberge

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. — Aminatta Forna

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. — Thomas Keneally

I think narrators expect a high level of intimacy with their readers, and vice versa. — Tom Barbash

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

Narrators can make or break your audiobook experience. Make sure your read first. always remember who's voice you can stand and try to stick to these people other wise your will end up hating the book. 50shades worst narrator ever. wined the whole book. enjoyed it much more in my head — Anonymous

Narrative is an open-ended invitation to ethical and poetical responsiveness. Storytelling invites us to become not just agents of our own lives, but narrators and readers as well. It shows us that the untold life is not worth living.
There will always be someone there to say, 'tell me a story', and someone there to respond. Were this not so, we would no longer be fully human. — Richard Kearney

I don't normally make documentaries. I'm a drama director. I've made a few short docs, but I don't like talking heads or 'voice of God' narrators. — Asif Kapadia

I used to be a narrator for bad mimes. — Steven Wright

I normally write in the first person, and my narrators are as real to me as any of the people I have worked with. They live and breathe in my imagination. — Michael Robotham

I can't reasonably pretend to be a transparent and omniscient narrator who brings no personal perspective. That person doesn't exist. — Molly Crabapple

Ezra clapped his hands. "all right," he said. "In addition to the books we're reading as a class, I want to do an extra side project on unreliable narrators." Devon Arliss raised her hand. "what does that mean?" Ezra strode around the room. "well, the narrator tells us the story in the book, right? But what if ... the narrator isn't telling us the truth? Maybe he's telling us his skewed version of the story to get you on his side. Or to scare you. Or maybe he's crazy! — Sara Shepard

(We are merely narrators, and would hate to make assumptions as to what the reader would find tragic.) — Cynthia Hand

One of the fun things about unreliable narrators is they can be funny. You can admire things about them and laugh with them. — Hanya Yanagihara

I write almost always in the third person, and I don't think the narrator is male or female anyway. They're both, and young and old, and wise and silly, and sceptical and credulous, and innocent and experienced, all at once. Narrators are not even human - they're sprites. — Philip Pullman

I had done a deed - what was it? — Edgar Allan Poe

BOMBAY WAS CENTRAL, had been so from the moment of its creation: the bastard child of a Portuguese-English wedding, and yet the most Indian of Indian cities. In Bombay all Indias met and merged. In Bombay, too, all-India met what-was-not-India, what came across the black water to flow into our veins. Everything north of Bombay was North India, everything south of it was the South. To the east lay India's East and to the west, the world's West. Bombay was central; all rivers flowed into its human sea. It was an ocean of stories; we were all its narrators, and everybody talked at once. — Salman Rushdie