Here is an entirely banal idea that I think has the potential to change the world: Take evidence seriously. Taking evidence seriously does not mean privileging numbers over all other forms of knowledge - theories, narratives, images. Nor does it mean the kind of radical skepticism that questions everything to the point where no action is possible.
Abhijit Banerjee
The Greeks first identified the Amazons ethnographically, as a nation of men and women distinguished by something outstanding in their gender relations. Later, any ambivalence or anxiety that knowledge of this alternative gender-neutral culture evoked among Greeks was played out in their mythic narratives about martial women.
Adrienne Mayor
The sheer number of legendary narratives and historically verifiable incidents invites us to revise assumptions about the origins of biological and chemical warfare and its moral and technological constraints.
'Game of Thrones' is the broadest of narratives. I don't know if anyone in the U.S. has done a story on such a large scale before, both in terms of what George R.R. Martin wrote and what's on the show.
Alex Graves
It's seldom that you find great moments in television. Usually you remember - in 'Breaking Bad' or any of these other great shows - you remember situations or characters. Not moments. But I have to say, I can make the same argument for mainstream movies, which have bad narratives and also no memorable moments.
Alfonso Cuaron
Every great narrative is at least two narratives, if not more - the thing that is on the surface and then the things underneath which are invisible.
Ali Smith
In our evolutionary narratives, the organism itself often seems to play a passive role: a powerless victim, almost, of changes to its environment or mutations in its genes.
Alice Roberts
The religious imagery and fairytales that formed our shared cultural references have been replaced by the cult of celebrity. Marilyn is the sex goddess, Camilla Parker Bowles is cast as the wicked witch, Che Guevara is the revolutionary. Celebrities have become visual shorthand for narratives that shape our lives.
Alison Jackson
Britain First is an extremist organisation which seeks to divide communities through their use of hateful narratives which spread lies and stoke tensions.
Amber Rudd
Pervasive 'whites-only' policies and hateful narratives could not be further from the values that underpin our Armed Forces: those of integrity, respect for others, and having the bravery to do the right thing.
I'm endlessly intrigued by stories, and I love helping someone to formulate his or her story. I can drift off when I'm reading pure abstraction, but the narratives of human lives hold my attention every time.
Andrew Solomon
I do think that narrative is very important - I think that we use narrative to organize the world around us, and so it does matter a lot what kinds of narratives we have in our inventories and which ones are reinforced so often and so strongly that we habitually reach for them without thinking.
Ann Leckie
Mr. Trump's and Mr. Osteen's brands are rooted in success, not Scripture. Believers in prosperity like winners. Hurricanes and catastrophic floods do not provide the winning narratives crucial to keep adherents chained to prosperity gospel thinking. That is why it is easy for both men to issue platitudes devoid of empathy during natural disasters.
Anthea Butler
Historically, narratives of forgiveness were part of both the anti-slavery movement and the civil rights movement in America. 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' for instance, was based loosely on the life of the Rev. Josiah Henson, who forgave his master that wanted to sell him and beat him after Henson begged him not to.
Twain's 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court' made me long to wake in an era when my Casio wristwatch would strike folks as sorcery, and Martin Amis's 'Time's Arrow' wrecked my assumption that all narratives had to proceed from Then to More-Recently-Than-Then.
Anthony Doerr
Basketball games - and seasons - make great narratives; they feature distinct acts, heroes and villains, and guaranteed resolutions.
My sister-in-law believes that few narratives are so tightly constructed that you can't skip boring bits and still keep abreast of what's going on.
Arthur Smith
I think we assume a lot about both genders. But in particular I think we assume that only boys play games and that boys are only interested in playing games that reflect their narratives and their interests.
Ashly Burch
In documentaries, there's a truth that unfolds unnaturally, and you get to chronicle it. In narratives, you have to create the situations so that the truth will come out.
Ava DuVernay
I really admire Werner Herzog and Spike Lee. They're amazing documentarians. If you took away all the narratives, they'd just be amazing documentarians.
I am probably an outsider because I challenge conventional narratives about who should have a seat at the table.
The reason why bookstores are going out of business in the States is that people just can't focus on longer narratives now - even narrative film is in crisis in many ways, unless it's an adventure film.
The media doesn't create narratives, really. They're not that powerful. What they do is they tap into narratives that are already bubbling amongst their viewership or readership.
In our culture, we get very much into shorthanding people. And I got shorthanded as That Guy: Jennifer Lopez, movies bombed, therefore he must be a sort of thoughtless dilettante, solipsistic consumer blahblahblah. It's hard to shake those sort of narratives.
I think the narratives on 'Trans,' 'Plans,' and 'Narrow Stairs' moved away from the way I wrote on the first couple of records, which was a lot more impressionistic. I was writing those songs in my early 20s, so I thought I was being more clear than I actually was.
I am and always have been fascinated with people, and I have a very good time coming up with the narratives of people's lives, exploring how a person thinks and feels.
My shows are not narratives.
You can get good at finding access in the entertainment business. But the ideas, the narratives themselves, they are the only things that are going to be of any value.
Boxing distills and illuminates the essence of an athlete. There's nowhere to hide. Boxers live and perform at the extremes. They provide us with answers about a given contest, but more important, they ask us fundamental questions about human narratives. What does this person really stand for? How far will he go to defend it?
If you read the 13th Amendment, it doesn't talk about narratives of racial difference. It doesn't talk about ideologies of white supremacy. It only talks about involuntary servitude and forced labor.
Even in the days of early YouTube, we always focused on narratives, and we always focused on franchises. We didn't do a lot of vlogging and stuff like that.
Our culture thrives on black-and-white narratives, clearly defined emotions, easy endings, and so, this thrust into complexity exhausts.
I've been trying to immerse myself in the narratives of other people. I try to not isolate myself as much. It is really hard. People that are sensitive, you just feel too porous sometimes. There's this inertia that sets in, and it's hard to get out of bed. I think knowing that other people go through it is really reassuring.
To take women's equality from novelty to norm, we need to change narratives at a societal and individual level.
African narratives in the West, they proliferate. I really don't care anymore. I'm more interested in the stories we tell about ourselves - how, as a writer, I find that African writers have always been the curators of our humanity on this continent.
We breathe, we think, we conceive of our lives as narratives.
The fictional narratives that television, film, and the news provide for girls and young women are appalling.
Everybody's always living in fiction just as much as children, but the way our stories are faked is curtailed by all sorts of narratives we take into our own lives about what are the true narratives and what's not.
While historians may go on attempting grand, sweeping and defining narratives, they work in a time when readers know that another narrative always lies in wait, and that the more intelligent an historian is, the more tentative and self-scrutinizing the tone.
I wish reporters were more in tune to the difference between the Asian experience and the Asian-American experience. I think often they lump the two together and think that when I talk about Asian-American narratives that they can cite 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' or 'Mulan' as proof of concept when it's a different experience.
There are no figures in the Trump campaign who colluded with Russia - but there were at least five in the Obama administration who helped push the bogus narratives of collusion and obstruction, and they have plenty of questions to answer.
I'm mostly drawn to narratives that are difficult for me to visualize.
I create fictional narratives, but it's based on literal people.
We are used to women's narratives being defined through the male perspective. I challenge that as a concept.
For the fiction students I teach, one of the most common mistakes is to start in the wrong place. Often the actual story doesn't begin until about a third of the way into their narratives. They start off instead with excessive scene-setting, metaphysical speculation, introducing nonessential dramatis personae, throat-clearing, etc.
I'm very strict in my belief that non-fiction should be truthful, and fiction is for invented narratives.
That slave narratives existed at all implied a satisfactory conclusion to the journey - the attainment of literacy, the escape to the place where one could reflect on the experience of bondage and the flight to freedom, and, in the early days of the slave trade, the conversion to Christianity.
Slave narratives had their greatest influence on public opinion and on literature in the U.S. between 1830 and 1860. After Reconstruction's defeat, their urgency of tone was replaced by the softer one of reminiscence.
Stories are different every time you tell them - they allow so many possible narratives.
My whole life I've tried to find the thing I can do that other people can't do, and invest in that, and the one thing I can do is write narratives and build characters. I can do that.
