Unreliable Narrator Quotes

#1. A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story.

Lynn Abbey

#2. I notice I may have somehow mixed up two events, my visit with Rita to Briceland on our way to Cantrip, and our passing through Briceland again on our way back to New York, but such suffusions of swimming colors are not to be disdained by the artist in recollection.

Vladimir Nabokov

#3. I could tell the officer all of this because it was the truth. All of this happened in the house at some stage. Should it matter when it happened?

Sarah Schmidt

#4. There's something uniquely exhilarating about puzzling together the truth at the hands of an unreliable narrator.

Maria Semple

#5. Stupid arguments and the desire to be right -- that's what drives people apart -- that or death.

Frances Norris

#6. I don't work out but generally I am fit, which is why I don't work out.

Natalie Massenet

#7. The man who tells you nothing frightens him is whistling in the dark. Besides, fear is not necessarily bad. It may guard you from harm. And I suspect that fear of being caught, punished and disgraced keeps many more of us from committing crimes than does the voice of conscience'.

Victoria Clayton

#8. I think every first-person narrator in a novel should be compromised. I prefer that word to 'unreliable.'

Charles Palliser

#9. Who are you, Lucy Snowe?

Charlotte Bronte

#10. I just respect audiences to understand that that's what goes on in movies. I just try to make movies that respect the intelligence of the audience. Respect that they understand that the narrator is always unreliable and respect that they understand that the medium can do whatever it wants.

Guy Maddin

#11. My name is Towner Whitney. No, that's not exactly true. My real first name is Sophya. Never believe me. I lie all the time.

I am a crazy woman... That last part is true.

Brunonia Barry

#12. 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

#13. Hate crimes based on sexual orientation are among the three top reported hate crimes after race and religion, ... Our laws should not ignore that reality.

Janet Reno

#14. The line between courageous faith and foolish idealism is, almost by definition, one angstrom wide.

Eric Metaxas

#15. I very much like the idea of the unreliable narrator. Shaping my fictions as monologues - by introducing the "I" - allows me to be as unreliable as I like.

Norman Lock

#16. The beauty of my passion had been crushed under the weight of my horrific past.

Anne Tibbets

#17. I know I said that I always choose the anticlimactic over the irrevocable, and yes of course what I meant was that I have always been a coward, but I lied: not always, there was that night, there was that one time.

Tana French

#18. I loved my time in Congress, but people who spend all of their time planning to run for office have very few useful skills to deploy when they finally get there.

John Sununu

#19. If you're looking for a story about nice people doing nice things, this isn't for you. You will be burdened with an unreliable narrator who will disappoint and repel you at every turn.
Still with me?
Too bad for you.
I can't wait to break your heart.

Christopher Buehlman

#20. It varies by community. At (one local community) we've never offered them. But at most communities, we offer 2 or 3 percent off base price.

Roger Lewis

#21. Each time, Lippmann would talk a mile a minute, and Danny and Vinny would stare in wonder. Their meetings acquired the flavor of a postmodern literary puzzle: The story rang true even as the narrator seemed entirely unreliable.

Michael Lewis

#22. How confusing. Could it be that our narrator is unreliable? No such chance. Mind like a steel trap, I have.

Daniel Handler

#23. Inspiration is intention obeyed.

Emily Carr

#24. I think every narrator is an unreliable narrator. In its classic definition - an unreliable narrator is one who reveals something they don't know themselves to be revealing. We all do that.

Rob Roberge

#25. I keep on fighting as long as my opponent can make a mistake.

Emanuel Lasker