Personal Narrative Quotes

#1. It's somewhat daunting to reflect that Hell is
possibly
the place where you are stuck in your own personal narrative for ever, and Heaven is
possibly
the place where you can ditch it, and take up wisdom instead.

Margaret Atwood

#2. Jung Chang was the first person to tell a grand historical, political story through a personal narrative.

Aminatta Forna

#3. Political leaders, who use the tools of mass propaganda to create a sense of faux intimacy with citizens, no longer need to be competent, sincere, or honest. They need only to appear to have these qualities. Most of all they need a story, a personal narrative.

Chris Hedges

#4. If I believe that abortion is wrong, and I want to convince you that it's wrong, there's no reason I should recount to you my personal narrative of how I came to believe this.

Jonathan Haidt

#5. Sometimes we have to inspire and encourage ourselves, through our personal narrative. And we start with what we know.

Deborah L. Parker

#6. Truth, naked, unblushing truth, the first virtue of all serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative.

Edward Gibbon

#7. Understand and challenge your personal narrative. Narratives become choices and actions - which become your life.

Bryant McGill

#8. Wearing clothes should be a personal narrative of emotion. I always respond to fashion in an emotional way.

Andre Leon Talley

#9. I grew up thinking that renting is perfectly normal. And then, strangely enough, I never did buy a house. I live in New York City, and I'm still renting. My own personal narrative shows that it is possible to live a respectable life without ever having owned a home.

Edmund Phelps

#10. As long as my personal narrative is in line with the narratives of the people around me, I can convince myself that my life is meaningful, and find happiness in that conviction.

Yuval Noah Harari

#11. The charade of politics is to make voters think that the personal narrative of the candidate affects the operation of the corporate state. It doesn't really matter on the fundamental issues whether the President is Republican or Democratic.

Chris Hedges

#12. I have always wanted what I have now come to call the voice of personal narrative. That has always been the appealing voice in poetry. It started for me lyrically in Shakespeare's sonnets.

Diane Wakoski

#13. I start with a mood or an idea that comes from a personal place emotionally, and the narrative concepts come much later.

James Gray

#14. When I decided to be an actor, years ago, I just said, 'Look, I'm not going to do this unless I can be the best,' but I don't know what 'the best' is.

Eddie McClintock

#15. It is a good discipline to be forced to work for work's sake, even to the length of not being allowed to enjoy the fruits of one's labour ...

Swami Vivekananda

#16. I know that the whole point - the only point - is to
find the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to
let them go.

Lauren Oliver

#17. I came to New York, and it was a really cool time. People like Jim Jarmusch and Spike Lee were making their first movies, and they were making movies that were personal narratives.

Christine Vachon

#18. As long as women are isolated one from the other, not allowed to offer other women the most personal accounts of their lives, they will not be part of any narratives of their own ... women will be staving off destiny and not inviting or inventing or controlling it.

Carolyn Heilbrun

#19. Saying NO is polite , possible and perfectly acceptable!

Abha Maryada Banerjee

#20. We all begin with a story of ourselves that we believe to be true. But perhaps true personal change, even healing, can only happen when we change that narrative, when we begin to tell ourselves and others a different story. Surely

Thrity Umrigar

#21. When you're being stalked by an angry mob with raspberries, the first thing to do is to release a tiger.

John Cleese

#22. I used to teach writing in a federal prison, and for my students' benefit, I would liken the narrative use of this highly personal point of view to a boxer's getting in close to his opponent.

Norman Lock

#23. Reality exists only through experience, and it must be personal experience. However, once related, even personal experience becomes a narrative.

Gao Xingjian

#24. Healing stories are magickal tales born from personal tribulation and victory, which are then shared.

S. Kelley Harrell

#25. Christianity is the religion of melancholy and hypochondria. Islam, on the other hand, promotes apathy, and Judaism instills its adherents with a certain choleric vehemence, the heathen Greeks may well be called happy optimists.

Franz Grillparzer

#26. I carry a knife now because I read in a white magazine that all black people carry knives. So I rushed out and bought me one.

Redd Foxx

#27. Writers of memoir are storytellers, and the point of a personal story is to make a truth that resonates for you, that closes the experience around a narrative and brings it to completion.

Lisa Dale Norton

#28. Choosing to love, in spite of all its complexities, is the only freedom there is.

Chriscinthia Blount

#29. When you have a child, you think about your personal history and what you offer them as a larger narrative, and I realised I knew nothing about my father's circumstances other than what he'd told me.

John Burnside

#30. Laughter means: taking a mischievous delight in someone else's uneasiness, but with a good conscience.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#31. When people oppose your view, you can become a lightning rod, but if I were you, I'd let them stew ...

John Geddes

#32. I need to tell the things that are important but which don't make sense in terms of the narrative, things that would destroy symmetry or narrative pace. This is my personal belief about what it means to write nonfiction.

Akhil Sharma

#33. I do my best; I put out things I believe in and if you don't like it then pass on to something else.

Rob Halford

#34. Like something happened to Preppy. That wasn't your fault, dick slick. It was mine. I literally couldn't dodge that bullet. See what I did there? Oh my shit I'm hilarious.

T.M. Frazier