A Quote by Geoff Dyer

In the '80s, the world I was living in wasn't this world of consumption. There wasn't that much to buy, really. Actually I'm still struck by that. There's not an awful lot of stuff I want. Somebody quotes Diogenes, who's walking around saying, "How many things there are in the marketplace of which Diogenes has no need." I always feel that. Except of course when you're living in Venice, California and you see all these lovely houses!

Geoff Dyer

Quote Topics

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Quote Author

Geoff Dyer
English - Writer
Born: June 5, 1958

I think of myself as quite a confused kind of person, because I think there's so many great things about the world, but there are so many awful things too. I feel very guilty a lot of the time about enjoying my life so much when there are people living in such misery.

Lily Allen

Well, I really want to encourage a kind of fantasy, a kind of magic. I love the term magic realism, whoever invented it – I do actually like it because it says certain things. It's about expanding how you see the world. I think we live in an age where we're just hammered, hammered to think this is what the world is. Television's saying, everything's saying 'That's the world.' And it's not the world. The world is a million possible things.

Terry Gilliam

When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: ‘Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.’ It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government.

Henry Hazlitt

Right after the 9/11 attacks I was living near Oakland in California with a buddy who had also grown up in the skate/punk scene of the 80s. We were so shell-shocked from the attacks that we sort of regressed into this childlike mode of filling our apartment with '80s memorabilia. We got all of our favorite skateboard decks off of eBay, bought a bunch of old independent trucks, we got a credit card so that we could buy 720 off of a videogame vendor, we sat around listening to T.S.O.L. and The Misfits playing 720 and pretending that we were still living in our childhood.

Rick Remender

One of the things about me is that I actually had marginally middle-class living from writing. For years and years, I actually wrote so much through the '70s and '80s that I made a living. And very rarely have I had to take another job. And now it's impossible for anybody coming up to make such a living. They've pissed in the temple, you know?

Richard Meltzer

There's an awful lot of choices in the world as far as what one can do for a living. It's best to be familiar with as many sectors of the working world as you can be so you'll be better at your creative job anyway.

Justine Bateman

For me, the experience of not living in America was recognizing that I was American. You don't think about yourself being so culturally encoded, so nationally stamped; you don't discover that when you're a tourist for a month. You see how you reflect the place you're from. When I came back from living in Europe, I was very struck by how I didn't see America as the center of the world in the same way. It's very easy to slip back because America is so powerful. But any place you live is the center of the world.

Lynne Tillman

I look around and I know there's a lot in the world that I want to see changed - and I want to be a part of something bigger than myself. I want to see things change, in myself as much as in the world around me.

Jon Foreman

Diogenes, when asked from what country he came, replied, "I am a citizen of the world."

Diogenes Laertius

I really feel like a walking testimony of like if you set your mind to things, how things can come true for you. I feel like I'm like, like the law of attraction. I feel like I'm living that life wholeheartedly. Everything that I've looked for out of life, it's come to be so far... I'm working hard, I'm not getting lucky, I'm earning things... I feel like a living testament to how you can just put your mind to anything and make it happen.

Jon Jones

Most times we only see things for the way we are. But we're good at lying to ourselves. Sometimes we need somebody who's not living in our skin to point out how things really are.

Charles de Lint

Because music wasn't free yet, they wouldn't really offer MP3s so you had to buy things to see if you liked it or not. Which is crazy if you think about how much music you bought and then didn't even like the stuff. It was a different world where bands made money off their music.

Marnie Stern

There was other stuff, too, like how something can be so much more than the parts it took to make it, and why people need things around them that lift them above their lives and make them feel the miracle of living.

Wendelin Van Draanen

To somebody else saying all I need is 10 million dollars, then I've probably made it. But there are Paul McCartneys walking around with $500 million catalogs. That's pretty much what I want. And that's just music. That doesn't even include directing and writing of movies and all of the other things that I want to go on to do. So I have a big dream.

The-Dream

I love what I do for a living, it's the greatest job in the world, but you have to survive an awful lot of attention that you don't truly deserve and you have to live up to your professional responsibilities and I'm always trying to balance that with what is really important.