Shakespeare tells the same stories over and over in so many guises that it takes a long time before you notice.
...the characters in my books all resemble each other. They live, with minor variations, the same moments, the same perils, and when I speak of them, my language, which is inspired by them, repeats the same poems in the same tone.
The ninety percent of human experience that does not fit into established narrative patterns falls into oblivion.
When male authors write love stories, the heroine tends to end up dead.
The truth of a myth...is not in its words but its patterns.
A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence.
I don't really think that very much is interesting about the superhero as an archetype.
What stories are new? All types of all characters march through all fables.
I do think that narrative is very important - I think that we use narrative to organize the world around us, and so it does matter a lot what kinds of narratives we have in our inventories and which ones are reinforced so often and so strongly that we habitually reach for them without thinking.
I'm a firm believer in the idea that there are a limited amount of human stories that we tell - there's about seven of them - and of course, there's variations on those stories, and they can take place in infinite places.
A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence. Whether the meaning of existence is only what we put into life by our own individual fortitude, as Sartre would hold, or whether there is a meaning we need to discover, as Kierkegaard would state, the result is the same: myths are our way of finding this meaning and significance.
Borges said there are only four stories to tell: a love story between two people, a love story between three people, the struggle for power and the voyage. All of us writers rewrite these same stories ad infinitum.
We haven't evolved a hero story that's female. We're always trying to fit women's stories into this male structure, which is this rising action, this powerful conflict, and this falling action. And I think a female hero story is not that. It's something else.
Themes recur again and again in my work.
My stories always have these twisted happy endings, and the boy always gets the girl.
The only reason we find structure in stories is because it's there naturally in human interaction, and in the way that people tell stories.
Most traditional ghost stories feature rather hapless protagonists, who have nasty things happen to them.
There's that old adage about how there's only seven plots in the world and Shakespeare's done them all before.
In Hindi films, there is a definite slot for every character and situation.
I've been reading a bunch of stuff lately - like Joseph Campbell - that has made me realize that people in our cultural, especially in the liberal community, often go in search of a foe. It's like we always need a hill to climb up or something to push against, or we feel as if we're not working constructively in the world.
Each author has his or her own voice. I read each book slowly so I can see the patterns they use to spread out the garden of earthly delights.
I think there are certain tenets set in place for all different types on genres. For thrillers, women usually die first. I can't say exactly why, and it's kind of a bummer... But I also can't explain why the wallflower girl in the romantic comedy always gets the guy in the end. That's just the way those movies go.
