Omniscient Narrator Quotes & Sayings

The third person narrator, instead of being omniscient, is like a constantly running surveillance tape. — Andrew Vachss

There is one person that is wiser than anybody, and that is everybody. — Charles Maurice De Talleyrand

The acid test of politics is not what you say at the hustings, but what you actually do in government. — Margaret Thatcher

Often the very things that you think have disqualified you are the ones that qualify you to do what God has called you to do. — Christine Caine

Come let's go inside. I'm sure you and your men are hungry."
"Yes," Allan said, grinning.
"Shameless," I heard David grunt.
"There is no glory in shame," Allan said back. — A.C. Gaughen

(On George Eliot's narrative strategy)
It also forfeits the great game of the omniscient narrator, which is to know secrets which none of the characters involved will ever learn, ironically taking their unhappy ignorance to the grave. — Fredric Jameson

When you pick up a book, everyone knows it's imaginary. You don't have to pretend it's not a book. We don't have to pretend that people don't write books. That omniscient third-person narration isn't the only way to do it. Once you're writing in the first person, then the narrator is a writer. — Paul Auster

My friend Markus Zusak wrote a story from the point of view of death, 'The Book Thief.' I thought that's a great idea, where your omniscient narrator is death. I'm glad he had that idea because I wouldn't have been able to work so well with it. — Shaun Tan

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

Free thought, free speech and a free press. — Anne Royall

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. — Neal Stephenson

Flattery is the worst and fastest way of showing our esteem — Jonathan Swift