Sublime

There are dozens of ways to break up the narrative even in the first person. But everything flows through the consciousness of this narrator, so you must be true to that voice.

That is, I could understand that a truthful account of it, according to actual events, would sound disturbing, but I did not feel disturbed by it. It was only that other people would be incapable of understanding the way in which objective reality did not account for its essential truth.

Spook shivered quietly. It felt strange to be hearing men he didn’t know speak of Kelsier in such tones. Spook had walked with Kelsier, learned from him. What right did these men have to speak as if they had known the man who had become their Survivor?

Welty’s “Why I Live at the P.O.” to illustrate the unreliable narrator

we are the unreliable narrators in the stories of our own lives. In psychology, this is called the introspection illusion.

And I also felt, standing so close to him, feeling such a passion to keep him from terror, that a decision—once again!—had been taken from my hands. For neither my father, nor Hella, was real at that moment. And yet even this was not as real as my despairing sense that nothing was real for me, nothing would ever be real for me again—unless, indeed,

Andy, I knew, was loyal; I trusted him, I valued his opinion, and yet his conversation sometimes made me feel as though I was talking to one of those computer programs that mimic human response.

And yet, I realized, one story felt real and the other did not. I realized that I did not believe that my son was dead.