Narrative Expert Pillows

'Unemployed doesn't look good on your resume. How about we say during that period you were a freelance writer?'

"Too bad about old Ainsworth. Published and published, but perished all the same."

"It's a heck of a tale...and well told, but we don't publish resumes."

News: Deaths! Deaths! Deaths!

Victor Hugo

The ghosts of Christmas yet to come.

"Max! Oh, my God! There's like a billion moving ideas in there!"

Drink for me and my hot mamma. Now! We don't serve beer. Latte. Two, punk! Decaf. You don't want to see him angry. Also, low-foam and soy milk would be great. You don't want to see him gassy. Can I get one of those little Twizzler sticks to stir it with? Cube of brown sugar, please. And one nonfat blueberry scone! Two! I'd like to see how John Wayne would've ordered a fancy coffee drink.

It was my story. A murder mystery. A who-done-it-and-got-away-with-it-until-he-wrote-about-it.

Grimm's Reality Tales.

Man commiting suicide finds the treasure at the bottom of the sea.

Atlas with the earth, says: 'So then I thought, Why not just roll the damn thing?'

"I see you're an ex televangelist who would like to stay in sales."

'Like it? I LOVED it! The narrative gripped me from the first sentence and didn't let go until the final, heart-stopping page! And the CHARACTERS! Without question, Harris, this is the finest year-end financial report you've ever written!'

'How about having at least one character who's alive and wearing clothes?'

My Aunt's Left Hook Expels Uriah From The Chaise

Man writing at laptop says: 'It's a UK road movie ??" to give it more scale, I'm making the characters three inches tall.'

'Mummy, the review of this book was more interesting.'

"I'm after the history section."

"But you didn't say they had to make sense - you just told us to write a thousand words a day."

"It's a narrative I didn't intend."

"It's a coming-of-middle-age story."

The Truth

"And Jasper, dear Jasper, with his soulful eyes and great sagging jowl, would be stretched upon the floor, his tail a-thump when he heard his master's footsteps." Penny loved Daphne Du Maurier's 'Rebecca'.

"Oh, you haven’t seen holiday drama ‘till you’ve met our little family."

'He's narrating it, I just know it.'

"That's Eleanor. She's a fact checker."

Toni Morrison

Rudy, I loved your memoir. It was fascinating. The way you overcame huge odds to invent the computer. How you went on to protect us from government surveillance. You know none of it's true. The way you swore yourself to humility. People so want to believe a good story.

Reading room

"What do you suppose Ken Burns will have to say about all this in 30 years?"

Ilyasah Shabazz

“I’ve got an idea for a story: Gus and Ethel live on Long Island, on the North Shore. He works sixteen hours a day writing fiction. Ethel never goes out, never does anything except fix Gus sandwiches and in the end she becomes a nympho-lesbo-killer-whore. Here’s your sandwich”

History Department: 'I used to be a revisionist myself, you know!'

"Tell us again — a little less graphic."