Howard Jacobson Quotes

Well, I suppose I'm interested in ways of storytelling and in stories that are about storytelling.

There is nothing wrong with just telling the story.

Usually when I read something, first of all I'm looking for the story and then when I reread it, I'm sort of checking every part of it to see if every scene is necessary.

Creating is one thing; telling the story is one thing. I see myself more as a storyteller than a story creator.

I'm very interested in foundational narratives.

There's only so many ways to tell a story before the story gets boring.

I am led to the proposition that there is no fiction or nonfiction as we commonly understand the distinction: there is only narrative.

The first lie of fiction is that the author gives some order to the chaos of life: chronological order, or whatever order the author chooses.

To combine telling an interesting story with brilliantly written characters is the most difficult thing to do.

I do think the challenge, in a way for me, is to write a narrative film and when you finish watching it you feel like it's a collage. You tell the narrative, you tell the story, but you feel like you've created this tapestry. But it also has a shape, a story.

My sister-in-law believes that few narratives are so tightly constructed that you can't skip boring bits and still keep abreast of what's going on.

Plot and character are virtually the same thing.

Big stories have lots of angles, and you have to decide what part of that story you want to address.

I prefer to bring these to the service of story rather than to let them replace narrative.

I've always been really attracted to playing with structure. To take the story of 'Fargo' and break it up in such a way that's it's not linear, per se.

I want prose fiction to be recognized as that, and I'm not interested in writing as it becomes more personal.

There is commerciality in storytelling, even in a film or a piece of literature. These things exist. That's why stories came to be: to hold attention and, while you're not looking, you'll get hopefully some nutritional value that the author has been working up. That's narrative; that's passing stuff down.

To be memorable and to have dramatic impact, informational detail must function actively within the dynamic of a story.

My major allegiance has been to storytelling, not to history.

And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you.

I always think first about the nature of the story. When I had the idea for 'The Namesake,' I felt that it had to be a novel - it couldn't work as a story.

I get the beginning. I get the end. Then I write the middle. That's how I do it.

The real problem is arranging that experience in a way that tells a story, which is just incredible enough to be interesting, but credible enough to be believed.

I've always enjoyed that kind of thing - thinking about the production of narrative and why it is that when we read a novel, we don't notice the fact that someone who might be very close-mouthed or tight-lipped is perfectly willing to tell us a story in 600 or 700 pages.

Some novels present a story form many points of view. Most movies tell only one person's side of the story. Sometime it's easy to use the strongest point of view, or find the character with the most dramatic experience. It depends on which themes the scriptwriter wants to explore.