“Never again shall a single story be told as though it were the only one.”

—  John Berger

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Never again shall a single story be told as though it were the only one." by John Berger?
John Berger photo
John Berger28
British painter, writer and art critic 1926–2017

Related quotes

Richard Matheson photo

“The vampire was real. It was only that his true story had never been told.”

Richard Matheson (1926–2013) American fiction writer

Source: I Am Legend and Other Stories

Chi­ma­man­da Ngo­zi Adi­chie photo

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”

Chi­ma­man­da Ngo­zi Adi­chie (1977) Nigerian writer

Source: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/15-quotes-from-chimamanda-adichie-that-have-change/

Umberto Eco photo

“Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

Source: Postscript to the Name of the Rose

Beverly Jenkins photo

“There were never any characters that looked like me or my sisters or my girlfriends…Our stories needed to be told.”

Beverly Jenkins (1951) American author of historical and contemporary romance novels

On becoming an unknowing pioneer in the romance genre in “Interviews: Beverly Jenkins” https://bookpage.com/interviews/19354-beverly-jenkins-romance#.XflqF-lKjcs in BookPage (Feb 2016)

Seth Grahame-Smith photo

“Without death,' he answered, 'life is meaningless. It is a story that can never be told. A song that can never be sung. For how would one finish it?”

Seth Grahame-Smith (1976) US fiction author

Source: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Patricia Rozema photo

“Sometimes "fidelity" can mean only focusing on one day of a story told over twenty years in a book.”

Patricia Rozema (1958) Canadian film director

As quoted in "Mansfield Park and Film : An Interview with Patricia Rozema" by Hiba Moussa, in Literature/Film Quarterly 32, No. 4 (2004), p. 255
Context: You cannot underestimate what a radical thing it is to change from one art form to another. An author slaves to start with just the right word, phrase, sentence, and paragraph. The sounds of the words are crucial. But all the demands of words and prose are lifted when you make a movie. The physical presence makes many unnecessary and some necessary ones impossible. So you serve two masters as an adapting filmmaker: the author's intention and the needs of film. Sometimes "fidelity" can mean only focusing on one day of a story told over twenty years in a book.

Nick Flynn photo

“Perhaps it is our fear, that in the silence between stories, in the moment of falling, the fear that we will never find the one story which will save us, and so we lunge for another, and we feel safe again, if only for as long as we are telling it.”

Nick Flynn (1960) American writer

Brandon Sanderson photo

“All stories told have been told before. We tell them to ourselves, as did all men who ever were. And all men who ever will be. The only things new are the names.”

Brandon Sanderson book Words of Radiance

Source: Words of Radiance

Mark Strand photo

“We are reading the story of our lives
As though we were in it
As though we had written it.”

Mark Strand (1934–2014) Canadian-American poet, essayist, translator

Related topics