Unreliable Narrator Quotes & Sayings

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 notice I may have somehow mixed up two events, my visit with Rita to Briceland on our way to Cantrip, and our passing through Briceland again on our way back to New York, but such suffusions of swimming colors are not to be disdained by the artist in recollection. — Vladimir Nabokov

There's something uniquely exhilarating about puzzling together the truth at the hands of an unreliable narrator. — Maria Semple

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 know I said that I always choose the anticlimactic over the irrevocable, and yes of course what I meant was that I have always been a coward, but I lied: not always, there was that night, there was that one time. — Tana French

I wish I did not know parts of the past; I wish they had never happened. But the past is the past, and someone must remember, and speak of it. — Robert Jackson Bennett

But to be fair, if you take players from my era to now, the game has changed and the players have many more shots. They use them differently than we did. The speed of the game has changed. — Ivan Lendl

How confusing. Could it be that our narrator is unreliable? No such chance. Mind like a steel trap, I have. — Daniel Handler

These types of films that are psychologically sort of dark at times, I find extremely exciting to do because there's always something to think about. There's nothing more boring than to show up on set and say a line and know that your character means exactly what they say. It's interesting to have an unreliable narrator in a film and that's what both of those films have been. — Leonardo DiCaprio

Who are you, Lucy Snowe? — Charlotte Bronte

I believe in some sense much akin to the belief of faith, that I noticed, felt, or underwent what I describe - but it may be that the only reason childhood memories act on us so strongly is that, being the most remote we possess, they are the worst remembered and so offer the least resistance to that process by which we mold them nearer and nearer to an ideal which is fundamentally artistic, or at least nonfactual; so it may be that some of these events I describe never occurred at all, but only should have, and that others had not the shades and flavors - for example, of jealousy or antiquity or shame - that I have later unconsciously chosen to give them ... — Gene Wolfe

No, on the outside view there was nothing for anyone to notice about me. I remained one pillar of a trinity, another pillar was lying only temporarily (temporarily! temporarily! temporarily!) in the hospital, I was the pilot of a three-engine aircraft, one of whose engines had stalled: there is no reason to panic, this is not a crash landing, the pilot has thousands of flight hours behind him, he will land the plane safely on the ground. — Herman Koch

I was fortunate enough to work at the peak of the great golden age of musicals. And then for awhile, I think they were being advanced in different ways. Andrew Lloyd-Webber brought the rock beat to musicals; people tried different things. The joy of musicals is that there is no perfect recipe; it is what you throw into it. — Julie Andrews

A lot of crime writing suffers from treading water. I feel an obligation to move the character on and not repeat myself. I try to fit him into a different period and a different agenda. That way, you learn slightly more about his personal history in the tradition of the unreliable narrator. It makes it more challenging to write. — Philip Kerr

Charity means love towards the neighbor and compassion, for anyone who loves his neighbor as himself also has as much compassion for him in his suffering as he does for himself in his own. — Emanuel Swedenborg

I found it hard to write the bits where the things that were at first surprising or even shocking became normal incrementally until I couldn't see that they were anything but normal, because everything else had shifted just one centimetre here and one centimetre there, moving at the speed fingernails grow, until finally everything just clicked into exactly the wrong place. — Olivia Sudjic

I just respect audiences to understand that that's what goes on in movies. I just try to make movies that respect the intelligence of the audience. Respect that they understand that the narrator is always unreliable and respect that they understand that the medium can do whatever it wants. — Guy Maddin

Each time, Lippmann would talk a mile a minute, and Danny and Vinny would stare in wonder. Their meetings acquired the flavor of a postmodern literary puzzle: The story rang true even as the narrator seemed entirely unreliable. — Michael Lewis

I always said that I wouldn't use a teleprompter, and if I start to sing real flat, I'll hang it up. — Jimmy Buffett

I guess, as a conductor, one goes in and out of fashion. Your career starts with a bang, everyone thinks you're wonderful, and then with middle age, something happens and you go into the wilderness. — Jeffrey Tate

I think people talk too much; that's the truth of the matter. I do. I don't believe in words. People use too many words and usually wrongly. I am sure that in the distant future people will talk much less and in a more essential way. If people talk a lot less, they will be happier. Don't ask me why. — Michelangelo Antonioni

If you're looking for a story about nice people doing nice things, this isn't for you. You will be burdened with an unreliable narrator who will disappoint and repel you at every turn.
Still with me?
Too bad for you.
I can't wait to break your heart. — Christopher Buehlman

I could tell the officer all of this because it was the truth. All of this happened in the house at some stage. Should it matter when it happened? — Sarah Schmidt

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

His head is a little below mine, so that when he looks up at me it's at a juvenile angle. It must amuse him, this fake subservience.
(...)
The problem wasn't only the women, he says. The main problem was with the men. There was nothing for them any more.
(...)
That was part of it, the sex was too easy. Anyone could just buy it. There was nothing to work for, nothing to fight for.
(...) — Margaret Atwood

To do good to one is to do bad to another. But you don't need to hear my excuses. They are the same that everyone makes to themselves when faced with the misery of others; though they would like to do the right thing, they simply fail to do so and look after themselves instead. — Fay Weldon

I think every first-person narrator in a novel should be compromised. I prefer that word to 'unreliable.' — Charles Palliser

Live Life, Write it and Share it — C. Claire Lucka

My reflections amount to a love story that is mostly made up, from memories that are mostly false, between people who were mainly not there. The things for which she was not there have her in them now more deeply because of her absence, and her effect on my way of seeing them. Anytime I note her absence from a thing, she arrives at once, as if summoned, entrenching herself more deeply than she exists in my memories of times when she was there, so that time, the sequence of what really happened, seems to curve around her. — Olivia Sudjic

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

Consider before acting, to avoid foolishness: It is the worthless man who speaks and acts thoughtlessly. — Pythagoras

My name is Towner Whitney. No, that's not exactly true. My real first name is Sophya. Never believe me. I lie all the time.

I am a crazy woman... That last part is true. — Brunonia Barry