Top 45 First-Person Quotes

First-person narrators is the way I know how to write a book with the greatest power and chance of artistic success.

You have to design and program differently. Combat action in an MMO is so different to combat in a first-person shooter.

In the summer of 2010, I was working on a version of ‘True Detective’ that I was thinking might be my next novel, and it was told in these two first-person voices; Cohle and Hart’s voices.

Growing up, I mostly read comic books and sci-fi. Then I discovered the book ‘Jane Eyre’ by Jane Austen. It introduced me to the world of romance, which I have since never left. Also, the world of the first-person narrative.

When I worked on 2001 – which was my first feature film – I was deeply and permanently affected by the notion that a movie could be like a first-person experience.

Novels are political because in them, we try to identify with people who are not like us. And, in that sense, I like the first-person singular because I have to imitate accurately the voice of someone who is not like me. The third-person singular gives me an authority over a character.

I don’t usually like teen novels written in the present tense, particularly those told from a first-person viewpoint. Too many writers seem to believe that using either or both devices automatically imbues their stories with deep seriousness and a contemporary feel.

If I have my way, I want to go start making really interactive television. Stuff where you can sit and watch real actors do a real series and they can get into some kind of gun battle and all of a sudden your television prompts you to pick up your controller and all of a sudden, you’re playing a first-person shooter.

The quality I appreciated most about Grafton was her loyalty. She stuck with ‘Kinsey Millhone’ and the alphabet series conceit for her entire career but did not allow herself to stagnate as a writer. Kinsey’s first-person narrative gradually made room for other, third-person perspectives.

Because I write fiction, I don’t write autobiography, and to me they are very different things. The first-person narrative is a very intimate thing, but you are not addressing other people as ‘I’ – you are inhabiting that ‘I.’

I like to write first-person because I like to become the character I’m writing.

Historically speaking, the books I usually connect with the most are written in first-person narrative.

Don’t see the point in reading ghost-written autobiographies, even though some of these published lives may fascinate me. The ‘ghost’ is always present, manipulating an interview into first-person singular text, and it feels like I’m reading a lie.

A forecasting game is a kind of simulation, a kind of scenario, a kind of teleconference, a kind of artifact from the future – and more – that enlists the participants as ‘first-person forecasters.’

I’m always fascinated by the use of the first-person plural talking about sports.

Sometimes shutting off the sound on the television can allow you to actually watch the game and take it in in an entirely different and more direct way – a first-order, first-person experience – rather than filtered through the mind of another.

I’ve always been interested in giving the audience a first-person experience in my movies.

I’ve tried Oculus Rift; I’ve played with the Steam VR rig. Both are mind-blowing. In a traditional video game setting, in a first-person shooter, you can see a tower in the distance. You can walk up to that tower and use your controller to look up.

Choosing the narrator for a first-person story like ‘Downriver’ is a crucial decision because the voice has to be one the reader wants to listen to, and the voice has to be a match for the emotion you want the story to carry.

One of the things I loved about working on ‘Portal’ was that we’d get emails from people saying, ‘I love to play first-person shooters but my girlfriend won’t play them with me. But I got her to play ‘Portal’ and she had a blast.’

I think that first-person shooter is a stable genre that’s going to be here forever, just like there are going to be driving games forever. There’s something just intrinsically rewarding about turning around a corner and shooting at something.

I’m always reaching for something we really haven’t done, and War of the Worlds has a lot of this sort of documentary look to it and first-person camera view that is a new thing for me. I’ve done some stuff like that before, but nothing like the extent of this and digitally.

I always start a book thinking that it can be something other than first-person present, and I always come back to first-person present. It’s just the easiest way.

I think that first-person narration is very characteristic of contemporary optics, in which the individual performs the role of subjective center of the world.

The first-person shooter genre owes itself to ‘Duke Nukem.’

Nowadays, if somebody in America is feeling alone and wants to find a coming out story, they just search ‘coming out,’ and they’ll find millions of first-person examples of people telling their story.

I’m not an impersonator. I’ve only got one voice and only do one guy and his first-person essays.

I like making movies that have some of the qualities of first-person shooter games. That was very important to me for the ‘Bourne’ franchise.

Autobiography is awfully seductive; it’s wonderful. Once I got into it, I realized I was following a tradition established by Frederick Douglass – the slave narrative – speaking in the first-person singular, talking about the first-person plural, always saying ‘I,’ meaning ‘we.’

I think that devices like Glass are going to do a terrific job of capturing your first-person perspective. And that’s what people first think of when they think of GoPro.

The language of politics is spoken in the first-person plural, and for Conservatives, the duty of the politician is to maintain that first-person plural in being.

Our job as writers and thinkers in the time is how to bring about the occasions that let people have that first-person experience – or the metaphoric experience that allows them to see human continuity as opposed to total threat, total willingness to do violence.

Hitchcock makes it very clear to us. There’s an objective and a subjective camera, like there’s a third- and a first-person narrator in literature.

If we’re reading a first-person account, we know that each and every one of us, myself included, have a great desire to be seen in a certain way, or to be perceived in a certain way. It’s unavoidable.

Any kind of horror video game where I’m the first-person player and I’m… I suddenly stop caring about the video game dude, and I’m like, I really don’t want him to die,’ and then the minute he dies, it upsets me. I can’t play those games.

If ‘Heavy Rain’ is a huge commercial success, it will show everybody in the industry that the world is sick of first-person shooters, that people are ready for an adult gaming experience. If we fail, it will say, ‘Please keep making the same old stuff.’

Using a first-person narrator is simply a matter of hearing the voice inside yourself.

The mind-brain is lived only from a first-person perspective, and it is a dynamic, plastic organ that changes in relation to the environment.

I think every first-person narrator in a novel should be compromised. I prefer that word to ‘unreliable.’

I’m such a first-person writer.

Writing, for me, when I’m writing in the first-person, is like a form of acting. So as I’m writing, the character or self I’m writing about and my whole self – when I began the book – become entwined. It’s soon hard to tell them apart. The voice I’m trying to explore directs my own perceptions and thoughts.

All of the narration in ‘Smile’ is first-person. Most of the books that I grew up reading had first-person narrators for some reason. My diaries were written in this voice, and since this story is autobiographical, it just felt like a natural extension.

There are certain things in ‘Twilight’… As much as I’m proud of that movie and I do like it, I feel like maybe I brought too much of myself to the character. I feel like I really know Bella now. But most readers feel like they know Bella because it’s a first-person narrative.

Our project goal was to push the boundaries of VR technology to show what a surf trip feels like from the first-person perspective. I’m excited to share this. It’s pretty incredible knowing my mom can now experience riding a 20-foot wave.

I always enjoy impersonating my characters in the first-person singular.