A Quote by Joan Didion

We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images.

Joan Didion

Quote Topics

Entirely Images Imposition Line Live Narrative Writers

Quote Author

Joan Didion
American - Author
Born: December 5, 1934

We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.

Joan Didion

We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.

Joan Didion

We tell ourselves stories in order to live. We live entirely by the impression of a narrative line upon disparate images, the shifting phantasmagoria, which is our actual experience.

Joan Didion

Perhaps fiction has, for me, served a similar purpose--what is a narrative arc if not the imposition of order on disparate events?--and perhaps it is my avid reading that has been my faith all along.

Curtis Sittenfeld

The art and science of memory is about developing the capacity to quickly create images that link disparate ideas. Creativity is the ability to form similar connections between disparate images and to create something new and hurl it into the future so it becomes a poem, or a building, or a dance, or a novel. Creativity is, in a sense, future memory.

Joshua Foer

I'm trying to make sure that the visual connections between the disparate elements are strong enough for the viewer to keep moving through the work. It's in paying attention to those hundreds of details that the flow of the line will guide an audience through the narrative in a way that will make them enter it enough to engage with it, and perhaps construct their own narrative.

Chitra Ganesh

There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to write propaganda.

Wole Soyinka

Let's stop reflexively comparing Chinese writers to Chinese writers, Indian writers to Indian writers, black writers to black writers. Let's focus on the writing itself: the characters, the language, the narrative style.

Celeste Ng

There is not a special imposition on writers to be activists. All that does is encourage writers to write propaganda. Propaganda can be written by anybody, including dictators.

Wole Soyinka

I am myself a professional creator of images, a film-maker. And then there are the images made by the artists I collect, and I have noticed that the images I create are not so very different from theirs. Such images seem to suggest how I feel about being here, on this planet. And maybe that is why it is so exciting to live with images created by other people, images that either conflict with one's own or demonstrate similarities to them.

Thomas Koerfer

We've become used to processing images that are part of the non-linear narrative theory. I think there's a thinner line between fantasy and normality. People spend much more time in their own heads now. There's so much to conform to, so many influences coming at you.

Irvine Welsh

Writers ... I think ... live on that fine line between insanity and genius.

Nikki Giovanni

Writers know - especially new writers - [that] a lot of it [creative process] is the prewriting stage, the talking, brainstorming, the narrative arc and the character sketches.

Jenna Bush

Basically, I viewed any work of art as an imposition of another person's taste, and saw the individual making this imposition as a kind of dictator.

Henry Flynt

Basically, at this time, I viewed any work of art as an imposition of another person's taste and saw the individual making this imposition as a kind of dictator.

Henry Flynt

If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals.