The happening and telling are very different things. This doesn’t mean that the story isn’t true, only that I honestly don’t know anymore if I really remember it or only remember how to tell it. Language does this to our memories, simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. An off-told story is like a photograph in a family album. Eventually it replaces the moment it was meant to capture. Karen Joy Fowler
Some Similar Quotes
  1. I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best. - Marilyn Monroe
  2. When someone loves you, the way they talk about you is different. You feel safe and comfortable. - Jess C. Scott
  3. When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always. - Mahatma Gandhi
  4. Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having... - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  5. The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then... - Thomas Merton
More Quotes By Karen Joy Fowler
  1. A man says something. Sometimes it turns out to be the truth, but this has nothing to do with the man who says it.
  2. I once broke up with a boy because he wrote me an awful poem.
  3. I didn't want a world in which I had to choose between blind human babies and tortured monkey ones. To be frank, that's the sort of choice I expect science to protect me from, not give me.
  4. There was something appealing in thinking of a character with a secret life that her author knew nothing about. Slipping off while the author's back was turned, to find love in her own way. Showing up just in time to deliver the next bit of...
  5. The Indians did not like to see anything odd -- a white squirrel, for instance.. .. They thought such oddities were messages, were omens of evil.. .. And the Indians put a great deal of faith in dreams.
Related Topics