Unreliable Narrators Quotes

In love and life, we never know when we are telling ourselves stories. We are the ultimate unreliable narrators. ~ Jean Kwok

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

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

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

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

The underlying and more ominous question is whether the story of our species - the greater human narrative - has simply become too enormous, too confused and terrifying, for us to grapple with. This might explain why so many of us now rely on a cacophony of unreliable narrators to shape our view of the world and ourselves . . . these voices deal in the same commodity: a fraudulent folklore whose central aim is insulate us from the true nature of our predicament, to manipulate our anxieties, to goad us into empty consumption or snag us in cycles of grievance and panic. ~ Steve Almond

I found no muse on Hyperion during those first years. For many, the expansion of distance because of limited transportation - EMVs were unreliable, skimmers scarce - and the contraction of artificial consciousness due to absence of datasphere, no access to the All Thing, and only one fatline transmitter - all led to a renewal of creative energies, a new realization of what it meant to be human and an artist. Or so I heard. No muse appeared. My verse continued to be technically proficient and dead as Huck Finn's cat. I decided to kill myself. ~ Dan Simmons

The truth of the matter is that for all the drive-in movie references, what Weston Ochse has really created in Multiplex Fandango is a travelogue. Acting as narrator and guide, Weston takes you on a trip to places familiar and obscure-New Orleans, the Sonoran desert, Mexico's Pacific coast, and the dark, impenetrable reaches of the soul. He shows off sights that chill the blood, and as with any good trip, the things seen and experienced along the way will stay with you for a lifetime. ~ Jeff Mariotte

It's amazing how easily we can cast ourselves in the role of hero. ~ Erica Bauermeister

Vision, even for a dragon, is woefully unreliable. What you can see with great clarity may not be real; what you cannot see may be the ultimate reality. ~ T.A. Barron

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, far from being unreliable historians or merely clever inventors of myth and legend, reveal themselves to be the type of witnesses a lawyer dreams of. ~ Timothy J. Stoner

New Hampshire polling data are unreliable because, when you call the Granite State's registered Republicans and independents in the middle of dinner and ask them who they're going to vote for, they have a mouth full of mashed potatoes and you can't understand what they say. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

Words alone were ambiguous, unreliable. But what could be reliable, if not words ~ Julianne Donaldson

I'd like to use IMAX. The problem with IMAX is that it's a very loud camera. It's a very unreliable camera. Only so much film can be in the camera. You can't really do intimate scenes with it. ~ J.J. Abrams

There's no other major item most of us own that is as confusing, unpredictable and unreliable as our personal computers. ~ Walt Mossberg

Wikipedia was the single most unreliable source of knowledge this side of The National Enquirer. ~ Paul Combs

Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man's greatest source of joy. And with death as his greatest source of anxiety. Over all history it has oppressed nearly all people in one of two ways: either it has been abundant and very unreliable, or reliable and very scarce. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

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

I think the large part of the function of the Internet is it is archival. It's unreliable to the extent that word on the street is unreliable. It's no more unreliable than that. You can find the truth on the street if you work at it. I don't think of the Internet or the virtual as being inherently inferior to the so-called real. ~ William Gibson

Opinions are formed in a process of open discussion and public debate, and where no opportunity for the forming of opinions exists, there may be moods -moods of the masses and moods of individuals, the latter no less fickle and unreliable than the former -but no opinion. ~ Hannah Arendt

At high school I was never comfortable for a minute. I did not know about Lonnie. Before an exam, she got icy hands and palpitations, but I was close to despair at all times. When I was asked a question in class, any simple little question at all, my voice was apt to come out squeaky, or else hoarse and trembling. When I had to go to the blackboard I was sure - even at a time of the month when this could not be true - that I had blood on my skirt. My hands became slippery with sweat when they were required to work the blackboard compass. I could not hit the ball in volleyball; being called upon to perform an action in front of others made all my reflexes come undone. I hated Business Practice because you had to rule pages for an account book, using a straight pen, and when the teacher looked over my shoulder all the delicate lines wobbled and ran together. I hated Science; we perched on stools under harsh lights behind tables of unfamiliar, fragile equipment, and were taught by the principal of the school, a man with a cold, self-relishing voice - he read the Scriptures every morning - and a great talent for inflicting humiliation. I hated English because the boys played bingo at the back of the room while the teacher, a stout, gentle girl, slightly cross-eyed, read Wordsworth at the front. She threatened them, she begged them, her face red and her voice as unreliable as mine. They offered burlesqued apologies and when she started to read again they took up rapt postures, mad ~ Alice Munro

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

When we're awake, cortisol can fragment memories - one reason eyewitness crime scene accounts are so unreliable. But at night that very fragmentation allows creative recombinations of ideas. ~ Jeffrey Kluger

When young, we're anxious - understandably - to find out if we've got what it takes. Can we succeed? Can we build a viable life for ourselves? But you - in particular you, of this generation - may have noticed a certain cyclical quality to ambition. You do well in high-school, in hopes of getting into a good college, so you can do well in the good college, in the hopes of getting a good job, so you can do well in the good job so you can ...
And this is actually O.K. If we're going to become kinder, that process has to include taking ourselves seriously - as doers, as accomplishers, as dreamers. We have to do that, to be our best selves.
Still, accomplishment is unreliable. "Succeeding," whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself (success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it), and there's the very real danger that "succeeding" will take up your whole life, while the big questions go untended. ~ George Saunders

The slow zone, based on the sensor data we're able to get, is approximately one million kilometers across." Holden pointed at the 3D representation on the screen behind him. "There are no visible stars, so the location of the zone is impossible to determine. The boundary is made up of one thousand three hundred and seventy-three individual rings evenly spaced into a sphere. So far, the only one we've been able to find that's 'open' is the one we came through. The fleets we traveled out with are still visible on the other side, though the Ring seems to distort visual and sensor data, making readings through it unreliable. ~ James S.A. Corey

They collapsed into each other, and although it would be indelicate to detail what happened next, these narrators will tell you that a "very special hug" does not begin to describe it. P.S. They totally consummated. ~ Cynthia Hand

After trying several unreliable web site hosts, I signed up with NitroTek and was pleased to discover there is a reliable, easy to work with service available to individuals and companies who want to keep a solid presence on the net. NitroTtek is a helpful, no-hassles company to work with. ~ Lesley Choyce

So too Plato was, in my view, a very unreliable Platonist. He was too much of a philosopher to think that anything he had said was the last word. ~ Gilbert Ryle

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

Gun laws are an attempt to nationalize the right of self-defense. Politicians perennially react to the police's abject failure to prevent crime by trying to disarm law-abiding citizens. The worse government fails to control crime, the more the politicians want to restrict individuals' rights to defend themselves. But police protection in most places is typical government work - slow, inefficient, and unreliable ... ~ James Bovard

If you are in a period of discouragement because you are going through a trial and you are asking yourself, "Why is this happening to me?" consider this: Never make a major decision when you are depressed. Often, when we get discouraged, we are tempted to say, "I'm just going to quit" or "I'm going to move" or "I'm going to change jobs" or "I'm going to file for divorce." Never make a major decision when you are depressed, because at that time your feelings are unreliable and you cannot exercise accurate judgment. Your focus is blurry, and your perspective is distorted. Instead, face the storm head-on and don't get involved in self-pity. ~ Rick Warren

Memory plays tricks. Memory is another word for story, and nothing is more unreliable. ~ Ann-Marie MacDonald

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

The dead are notoriously unreliable when it comes to standards of behavior," I said. "Particularly murder victims. They have no sense of decorum at all. ~ Tasha Alexander

Ford and General Motors executives made a big deal of the occasion by driving to Washington in their hybrid vehicles. Mulally of Ford came in an Escape SUV hybrid. Wagoner of General Motors was chauffeured in a Chevy Malibu hybrid.
Poor Bob Nardelli of Chrysler. The pickings were slim. Chrysler, known more for the styling of it's bodies than for its technological savvy, sent Nardelli to Washington in an Aspen Hybrid SUV, about the only "green" thing Chrysler had to offer. Problem is, it was a terrible vehicle and unreliable.
Despite being partially powered by a battery, the Aspen ran on a V-8 Hemi and got less than twenty miles to the gallon. The charging system was flawed and difficult to service.
His driver was Mike Carlisle, the homicide detective who had retired from the Detroit Police Department just a month earlier.
The media was invited to snap bon voyage photographs in Detroit, which they dutifully filed. What they did not see -and what Carlisle later told me- was that there were two engineers tailing Nardelli at a discreet three-mile buffer, carrying laptops and a trunk full of tolls in case the Aspen broke down. Even Chrysler didn't trust their products. ~ Charlie LeDuff

History, that excitable and unreliable old lady. ~ Guy De Maupassant

Real French people don't bake! At least they don't bake anything complicated, finicky, tricky or unreliable. ~ Dorie Greenspan