Unreliable Narrator Quotes

“Sometimes I think I am the unreliable narrator of my own life. Sometimes I think we all are.”
― Alice Feeney, His & Hers

“Telling this story will be painful. In fact, I do not know if I can tell it truthfully, though I'll try. I have been a liar all my life, you see. It's not uncommon in our family.”
― E. Lockhart, Family of Liars

“I know I said that I always choose the anticlimactic over the irrevocable, and yes of course what I meant was that I have always been a coward, but I lied: not always, there was that night, there was that one time.”
― Tana French, In the Woods

“... I believe in some sense much akin to the belief of faith, that I noticed, felt, or underwent what I describe—but it may be that the only reason childhood memories act on us so strongly is that, being the most remote we possess, they are the worst remembered and so offer the least resistance to that process by which we mold them nearer and nearer to an ideal which is fundamentally artistic, or at least nonfactual; so it may be that some of these events I describe never occurred at all, but only should have, and that others had not the shades and flavors—for example, of jealousy or antiquity or shame—that I have later unconsciously chosen to give them...”
― Gene Wolfe, Peace

“Why do we teach girls that their perspectives are inherently untrustworthy?" I would yell. I want to reclaim these words- after all, melodrama comes from melos, which means "music," "honey"; a drama queen is, nonetheless, a queen- but they are still hot to the touch. This is what I keep returning to: how people decide who is or is not an unreliable narrator. And after that decision has been made, what do we do with people who attempt to construct their own vision of justice?”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“If you’re looking for a story about nice people doing nice things, this isn’t for you. You will be burdened with an unreliable narrator who will disappoint and repel you at every turn.
Still with me?
Too bad for you.
I can’t wait to break your heart.”
― Christopher Buehlman, The Lesser Dead

“My reflections amount to a love story that is mostly made up, from memories that are mostly false, between people who were mainly not there. The things for which she was not there have her in them now more deeply because of her absence, and her effect on my way of seeing them. Anytime I note her absence from a thing, she arrives at once, as if summoned, entrenching herself more deeply than she exists in my memories of times when she was there, so that time, the sequence of what really happened, seems to curve around her.”
― Olivia Sudjic, Sympathy

“Indeed, now I come to think of it, nearly everything in the world is relevant to my situation.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea

“You might even ask me to apply my 'theory' to myself and explain what damage I had suffered a long way back and what its consequences might be: for instance, how it might affect my reliability and truthfulness. I'm not sure I could answer this, to be honest.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“No, on the outside view there was nothing for anyone to notice about me. I remained one pillar of a trinity, another pillar was lying only temporarily (temporarily! temporarily! temporarily!) in the hospital, I was the pilot of a three-engine aircraft, one of whose engines had stalled: there is no reason to panic, this is not a crash landing, the pilot has thousands of flight hours behind him, he will land the plane safely on the ground.”
― Herman Koch, The Dinner

“Even if readers claim that they 'take it all with a grain of salt', they do not really. They yearn to believe, and they believe, because believing is easier than disbelieving, and because anything which is written down is likely to be 'true in a way'. I trust this passing reflection will not lead anyone to doubt the truth of any part of this story! When I come to describe my life with Clement Makin credulity will be strained but will I hope not fail!”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea

“It's amazing how easily we can cast ourselves in the role of hero.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“Maybe she was not really like that. It's just that I would prefer you to think that what happened to her was justified.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“I notice I may have somehow mixed up two events, my visit with Rita to Briceland on our way to Cantrip, and our passing through Briceland again on our way back to New York, but such suffusions of swimming colors are not to be disdained by the artist in recollection.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Who are you, Lucy Snowe?”
― Charlotte Brontë

“I could tell the officer all of this because it was the truth. All of this happened in the house at some stage. Should it matter when it happened?”
― Sarah Schmidt, See What I Have Done

“I found it hard to write the bits where the things that were at first surprising or even shocking became normal incrementally until I couldn't see that they were anything but normal, because everything else had shifted just one centimetre here and one centimetre there, moving at the speed fingernails grow, until finally everything just clicked into exactly the wrong place.”
― Olivia Sudjic, Sympathy

“My name is Towner Whitney. No, that's not exactly true. My real first name is Sophya. Never believe me. I lie all the time.

I am a crazy woman... That last part is true.”
― Brunonia Barry, The Lace Reader

“You have more imagination than is good for you.”
― Chelsea Sedoti, The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett

“I must admit there are 'memories' in my head that are curious even to me.”
― Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture

“One or the other of us said 'I can't,' and if it was me I don't know why because I wanted to. Maybe I'm just remembering it wrongly to help me get over the rejection.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, White Is for Witching

“Tate explained that James was able to achieve this magic through the use of the first-person narrator. Tate said that the first person is the most difficult form because the writer is locked inside the head of the narrator and can’t get out. He can’t say “meanwhile, back at the ranch” as a transition to another subject because he is imprisoned forever inside the narrator. But so is the reader! And that is the strength of the first-person narrative. The reader does not see that the governess is the villainess because what the governess sees is all the reader ever sees.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“Unfathomable. Fathoms. I wonder is that the difficulty, that my memories and my imaginings are lying deeply in the same place? Or one on top of the other like layers of shells and sand in a piece of limestone, so that they have become the same element, and I cannot distinguish one from the other with any ease, unless it is from close, close looking?

Which is why I am so afraid to speak to Dr. Grene, lest I give him only imaginings.

Imaginings. A nice sort of a word for catastrophe and delusion.”
― Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture

“That's not true. I did meet both Laura and my ex-husband in graduate school, but they weren't dating. That would be a better story. I am often thinking of the better story because the actual story is so often boring.”
― Miranda Popkey, Topics of Conversation

“I have only recorded what everyone is saying (though they may not know they are saying it), and sometimes what they have seen (though they may not know they have seen it).”
― Thomas Ligotti, Teatro Grottesco

“There were a lot of different versions of the truth.”
― Katie Cotugno, Liar's Beach

“Killing people is, of course, a terrible thing to do. Lila says it should only be used as a last resort, and these people are really pushing all those buttons.”
― Emily Rennie