Indirect Narrative Quotes

I think, in a written novel, the way in which you play with the readers' emotion or the way in which you engage the readers' emotions can be very indirect. You could come at it through irony or comedy, etcetera, and you could capture people's sympathies and feelings kind of by stealth if you like.

I think that's what good writing is all about. You go into a genre to talk about other things. Tolkein created a whole world to talk about the world he lived in.

A writer should bury his thoughts deep and convey them through the characters in his novel.

I was a storyteller for The Band. It was never, 'Hey guys, here's a song about what happened to me.' I was always more comfortable writing fiction.

I love dipping into worlds at a fast and furious pace. A little glimpse allows the audience to put together the rest of that world in their brain. I love sketches that require the audience to piece together the comedic engine themselves. Give them all the information but not tell them what the scene is about so they can have that eureka moment of, "Oh my God, he's only used to the way urban students pronounce their names. That's what's going on here.".

My instinct is to write under the cloak of an opaque historical setting.

A story should be managed so that it should suggest interesting things to the reader instead of the author's doing all the thinking for him, and setting it before him in black and white.

The novelist can't successfully depict such horrifying reality. But she can, and must, try, to bear witness. There are many ways of doing this; the mode I prefer is indirect.

Everything I wrote about wasn't about me, but about the people listening.

As a songwriter, I'm not necessarily writing about myself or my life.

I think I initially started inventing characters in my songs because I didn't want to write directly about myself. Also, as a kid, I loved all the character names in Beatles songs, like Eleanor Rigby and Lovely Rita and Mean Mr. Mustard and Maxwell and Rocky Raccoon.

I feel like what Director Bong is so amazing at is taking so many things and presenting them to you - never telling you how to think, but, if you leave the theater thinking something, we've done our jobs right.

Most of my songs aren't about me. They're about stuff I've seen.

This means keeping many trails open at once, inevitably requiring a fairly 'parallel' plot. This plot should be discovered rather than announced, so show, don't tell.

I write with experiences in mind, but I don't write about them, I write out of them.

Almost anything is too much. I am trying in my poems to have the reader be the experiencer. I do not want to be there. It is not even a walk we take together.

I like stories where it feels like you're only seeing a small window of a bigger world.

It's nice when somebody tells you about their uncle. Especially when they start out telling you about their father's farm and then all of a sudden get more interested in their uncle.