It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.
To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.
When a man fell into his anecdotage it was a sign for him to retire from the world.
Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.
Life is too short for a long story.
Your tale, sir, would cure deafness.
With a tale, for sooth, he comet unto you; with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner.
The history of a soldier's wound beguiles the pain of it.
Faith! he must make his stories shorter or change his comrades once a quarter.