A Quote by Errol Morris

If someone tells you that George Bush is not the 43rd president of the United States, they might be engaged in wishful thinking, or denial, but if they make that claim, it's either true or false! And you can assess that, regardless of whether there's an omniscient narrator, or an unreliable narrator, or it's shot in vérité, or it's manipulated, it's agitprop, whatever! It makes no difference! It's a style!

Errol Morris

Quote Topics

Assess Bush Claim Denial Difference Either Engaged False George George Bush Make Makes Manipulated Might Narrator No Difference Omniscient President Regardless Shot Someone States Style Tells Thinking True True Or False United United States Unreliable Whatever Whether Wishful Wishful Thinking

Quote Author

Errol Morris
American - Director
Born: February 5, 1948

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

The thing I love about Dickens is the omniscient, omnipotent narrator, and the great confidence of the narrator, which marks 19th-century novelists in general and Dickens in particular.

Elizabeth Gilbert

George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, became the first incumbent president to increase his majority in both the Senate and the House and to increase his own vote (by over 3.5 million) since Franklin D. Roosevelt, political genius of the 20th century, in 1936.

Peggy Noonan

I'm anti-verite. I think the verite style is a completely false thing. Most things are false to arrive at a truth; verite is falsity without acknowledging its falsity.

Whit Stillman

Typically in my novels the narrator tells a story by remembering, and the memories are colored by this and colored by that. So the whole universe of the novel tends to be framed by the narrator's memories and thoughts.

Kazuo Ishiguro

Ezra clapped his hands. "all right," he said. "In addition to the books we're reading as a class, I want to do an extra side project on unreliable narrators." Devon Arliss raised her hand. "what does that mean?" Ezra strode around the room. "well, the narrator tells us the story in the book, right? But what if... the narrator isn't telling us the truth? Maybe he's telling us his skewed version of the story to get you on his side. Or to scare you. Or maybe he's crazy!

Sara Shepard

The omniscient narrator is a bizarre technique, when you think about it, and no one uses it much anymore. But for the novels I want to write, it's the only approach that makes sense to me.

Min Jin Lee

You can ask yourself, if a film makes a claim, is the claim true or false? Having said that, a style of presenting material doesn't guarantee truth. There's this crazy idea that somehow you pick a style, and by virtue of picking the style, you've provided something that is more truthful. It's as if you imagine that changing the font on a sentence you write makes it more truthful.

Errol Morris

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

I think the accurate description for the George W. Bush administration is a military plutocracy. Having lived and worked in the United States, I must add that I don't want to make too much of the distinction between the Bush regime and its predecessors. I don't see a great deal of difference.

John Pilger

When someone walks in and you say "a six-foot-tall man," you miss the opportunity to describe what a six-foot-tall man would look like to your narrator, because how the narrator describes a six-foot-tall man says more about the narrator than about the man.

Chuck Palahniuk

The president of the United States of North America, George W. Bush, the little gentleman of the North, the political cadaver that is visiting South America, that little gentleman is the president of all the history of the United States, and in the history of the United States, he has the lowest level of approval in his own country.

Hugo Chavez

George W. Bush is the first Catholic president of the United States.

Rick Santorum

The unreliable narrator is an odd concept. The way I see it, we're all unreliable narrators of our lives who usually have absolute trust in our self-told stories. Any truth is, after all, just a matter of perspective.