Narrative Perspective Quotes

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

To persevere is always a reflection of the state of one's inner life, one's philosophy and one's perspective ~ David Guterson

What you remembered? Probably. More or less. Different people remember things differently, and you'll not get any two people to remember anything the same, whether they were there or not. You stand two of you lot next to each other, and you could be continents away for all it means anything. ~ Neil Gaiman

I had accepted that all the dark memories were mine. But I had never realized that the beautiful ones were mine too. I had a right to them. And the right to embrace them, regardless of what happened before and after. I had a right to my happiness, as well as my grief. ~ Linda Olsson

I hate being bored when I read a story. Even a well-trod theme can be made fresh by a different perspective or fresh writing. ~ Ellen Datlow

Get some perspective. A lot of things that may aggravate you only do so because you have the luxury of not wrestling with bigger issues. Today, be thankful for everything you have: being alive, your friends and family, your health, a roof over your head, something to eat, clean water to drink, indoor plumbing, heating, air conditioning, clothes, shoes, a job, and freedoms. Many, many people have it worse. ~ Dinah Sanders

There is a palpable relief when I teach the perspective of nobility, of training in compassion, of non-religious ways to transform suffering and nurture our sacred connection to life. ~ Jack Kornfield

A friend in Dallas recently pointed out a new church building that cost $74 million. While this thought was still exploding in my mind, he pointed out another $7 million church building going up less than a minute away.

These extravagant buildings are insanity from a Two-Thirds World perspective. The $74 million spent on one new building in the United States could build more than 6,000 average-sized churches in India. The same $74 million would be enough to guarantee that the Good News of Jesus Christ could be proclaimed to a whole Indian state-or even some of the smaller countries of Asia. ~ K.P. Yohannan

Freud, one of the grand masters of narrative, knew that the past is not fixed in the way that linear time suggests. We can return. We can pick up what we dropped. We can mend what others broke. We can talk with the dead. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Many images of animals, mammals or birds, resurface regularly in my narratives. They are not symbols, but chromatic benchmarks. For me, music has always been the perfect construction - an inaccessible ideal. ~ Dumitru Tepeneag

No one sees clearly during a war. History gives perspective ~ Joanne Harris

Tibetans must take full authority and responsibility for developing industry, looking from all different perspectives, taking care of the environment, conserving resources for long-term economic health, and safeguarding the interests of Tibetan workers, nomads, and farmers. ~ Dalai Lama

History, as it was purveyed to us, was not so much a narrative, not even the detached observation of the rise and fall of fortunes and cultures. It was the litany of loss, attended by the inevitable sympathy for the vanquished side. The past was always the underdog, and we sensed it was only right to be on its side against the bully future. We were left with the impression that our own grip was loosening on some essential pediment as one empire after another was swallowed up, and the centuries collapsed into our own. ~ Patricia Hampl

I live in Harlem, New York City. I am unmarried. I like 'Tristan,' goat's milk, short novels, lyric poems, heat, simple folk, boats and bullfights; I dislike 'Aida,' parsnips, long novels, narrative poems, cold, pretentious folk, buses and bridges. ~ Langston Hughes

As women politicians, we talk about the most difficult themes of state security, foreign relations and development models, then ask, 'How do you make it work with your husband?' The interesting thing is that these women - most of them - don't lose the perspective that the focus is not the position but the job at hand. ~ Michelle Bachelet

Time is quixotic because it can torment us. When we have insufficient stimulus to fill our lives, we resent the relentless quality of time, and we engage in activities designed to "kill time." Time that passes slowly creates insufferable boredom; time that passes to quickly makes us aware of our accelerated death march. A person's perspective on time depends mostly on what they are most afraid of, boredom or death. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Pride is a deeply rooted ailment of the soul. The penalty is misery; the remedy lies in the sincere, life-long cultivation of humility, which means true self-evaluation and a proper perspective toward past, present and future. ~ Robert Gordis

With ancient history writers most immediately in view, the author indicates tendency to look to the virtues and vices of individuals when seeking causes. ~ Peter Heather

Flanked by his personal guardsmen, Emperor Gevalen walked toward me, never letting go of me with his eyes. It was thrilling and terrifying all at once. ~ Julie B. Campbell

To do magic you need to be smart, to be a magician you need to work hard ~ 'SON Of GOD' P.S.Jagadeesh Kumar

She wanted so to be tranquil, to be someone who took walks in the late-afternoon sun, listening to the birds and crickets and feeling the whole world breathe. Instead, she lived in her head like a madwoman locked in a tower, hearing the wind howling through her hair and waiting for someone to come and rescue her from feeling things so deeply that her bones burned. She had plenty of evidence that she had a good life. She just couldn't feel the life she had. It was as though she had cancer of the perspective. ~ Carrie Fisher

Prophetic preaching and writing certainly does not follow the patterns of Aristotelian rectilinear logic so fundamental to our discourse in the Western world. Instead, the approach in ancient Hebrew literature is to take up a topic and develop it from a particular perspective and then to stop and take up the same theme again from another point of view. This patter is kaleidoscopic and recursive. ~ Peter J. Gentry Stephen J Wellum

We should strive to focus our lens on what connects us as humans as opposed to our differences. In doing so, not only can we challenge the Orientalist and colonial aspects of traditional photographic narratives, but we can also create a new visual legacy marked by equitable discourse. ~ Neeta Satam

Hollywood. It lacks originality. Remake sucks.' But I had to look deeper into it from my own perspective. We are not trying to compete with the original at all and that's what allowed me to pull the trigger without any hesitancy . ~ Colin Farrell

I wanted to talk to very young kids about self-image and about being different and how that can be your strength, especially from the immigrant perspective. ~ Gloria Estefan

The Templeton Foundation distributes $70 million yearly in grants and fellowships. To put that in perspective, that's five times the amount dispensed annually by the U.S. National Science Foundation for research in evolutionary biology, one of Templeton's areas of focus. Given Templeton's deep pockets and not overly stringent criteria for dispensing money, it's no wonder that, in a time of reduced financial support, scientists line up for Templeton grants. ~ Jerry A. Coyne

The characterization of actions allegedly prior to any narrative form being imposed upon them will always turn out to be the presentation of what are plainly the disjointed parts of some possible narrative. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

But when considered from the unique perspective of eternity, fame and popularity aren't nearly as important as loving and being loved; status doesn't mean much when compared to service; and acquiring spiritual knowledge is infinitely more meaningful than acquiring an excess of wealth. ~ M. Russell Ballard

Being able to provoke a different point of view to the standard current ideological or political perspective as played out in conventional newspaper or radio reportage is what a public intellectual does. But it's not merely about being oppositional, because that's too negative. ~ Susie Orbach

The novel is the privileged vehicle of two ways of being: narrative and freedom: to be new (novel) in a speech open to all, and to be free in a speech that never concludes. ~ Carlos Fuentes

I hate the idea of repeating myself. I need new perspectives and challenges for each project, and I'm very happy that many people are able to follow me without any problem. ~ Christian Fennesz

I think I've always had a decent perspective on wins and losses on the tennis court. ~ Andy Roddick

If you think killing people is a solution to a problem, I not only disagree with you but also I hate your perspective. ~ Abu Sufyan Ibn Harb

When life ends it's like a book losing pages or a song skipping. It's abrupt and it doesn't make sense. ~ Benjamin Appleby-Dean

I drank from the crisp mountain stream, tasting filtered sky with a mossy undertone. I've never understood how being loved fully could change your entire perspective of the world. I only ever understood the wistfulness of it, and the longing and the frothy, violent bits. The mixed up, rained on parts. The escaped bits that smudge and bleed through. Slowly, I am coming to terms with how vulnerable I am to you, flat on my back like a submissive wolf pup. Daisy petals line your eyelashes, juice of a nectarine flavors your tongue. The side of your mouth twitches, hazy dreamscapes overtaking your mind while we bathe in the glorious autumn devastation. ~ Taylor Rhodes

Look at life from our perspective, and you eukaryotes will soon cease giving yourselves such airs. You bipedal apes, you stump-tailed tree-shrews, you desiccated lobe-fins, you vertebrated worms, you Hoxed-up sponges, you newcomers on the block, you eukaryotes, you barely distinguishable congregations of a monotonously narrow parish, you are little more than fancy froth on the surface of bacterial life. Why, the very cells that build you are themselves colonies of bacteria, replaying the same old tricks we bacteria discovered a billion years ago. We were here before you arrived, and we shall be here after you are gone. ~ Richard Dawkins

Ultimately, when I deliver something, a lot of times it will be from a black woman's perspective, but other times it will be just from a satirical, goofy perspective. ~ Jessica Williams

Now he wondered what use it would be. For Kaspar's death would not bring back his father, Elk's Call at Dawn, or his mother, Whisper of the Night Wind. His brother, Hand of the Sun, and his little sister Miliana would remain dead. The only time he would hear the voice of his grandfather, Laughter in His Eyes, would be in his memory. Nothing would change. No farmer outside Krondor would suddenly stand up in wonder and say, "A wrong has been righted." No boot-maker in Roldem would look up from his bench and say, "A people has been avenged. ~ Raymond E. Feist

Transcendence gets you beyond ego. If you go beyond ego, you see all of this in a more decent perspective and you can start to put all the pieces together. We haven't done that yet. Not as a civilization. ~ Edgar Mitchell

Life is not steady, you'll be happy at times, sad at time's, all we have to do is be patient, for a moment of happiness is worth a thousand moments of sadness and dread. ~ Maitha Alshamsi

Never underestimate the power of gaining a new perspective by simply changing your immediate environment. Going for a walk, reading a book, or talking to a friend can provide you with life-changing insights that you not otherwise attain while remaining stagnant. ~ Hal Elrod

I started a production company out of necessity, the need for great narratives for actors of color. ~ Viola Davis