A Quote by Aleksandar Hemon

In Bosnian, there's no distinction in literature between fiction and nonfiction; there's no word describing that.

Aleksandar Hemon

Quote Topics

Between Describing Distinction Fiction Fiction And Nonfiction Literature Nonfiction Word

Quote Author

Aleksandar Hemon
Bosniak - Writer
Born: September 9, 1964

I think, about the distinction between fiction and nonfiction. Fiction is not really about anything: it is what it is. But nonfiction - and you see this particularly with something like the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction - nonfiction we define in relation to what it's about. So, Stalingrad by Antony Beevor. It's "about" Stalingrad. Or, here's a book by Claire Tomalin: it's "about" Charles Dickens.

Geoff Dyer

I have this long-running idea that the distinction between fiction and nonfiction is not just, 'Did it happen or didn't it happen?' It's one of form.

Geoff Dyer

The distinction between literary and genre fiction is stupid and pernicious. It dates back to a feud between Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry James. James won, and it split literature into two streams. But it's a totally false dichotomy.

George R. R. Martin

Prose gets divided up into fiction and nonfiction and short fiction and long fiction and autobiographical nonfiction and so on. Poetry can do any of those things except with the added definition of intensified formal pressure.

Robert Hass

I am led to the proposition that there is no fiction or nonfiction as we commonly understand the distinction: there is only narrative.

E. L. Doctorow

The difference between fiction and nonfiction is that fiction must be absolutely believable.

Mark Twain

There's no division on my bookshelf between fiction and nonfiction. As far as I'm concerned, fiction is about the truth.

Arundhati Roy

To be creative means to connect. It's to abolish the gap between the body, the mind and the soul, between science and art, between fiction and nonfiction.

Nawal El Saadawi

Don't make a big distinction between fiction and non-fiction. These are arbitrary distinctions.

Farley Mowat

Beyond that, I seem to be compelled to write science fiction, rather than fantasy or mysteries or some other genre more likely to climb onto bestseller lists even though I enjoy reading a wide variety of literature, both fiction and nonfiction.

Joan D. Vinge

I don't read much nonfiction because the nonfiction I do read always seems to be so badly written. What I enjoy about fiction - the great gift of fiction - is that it gives language an opportunity to happen.