A Quote by Geoff Dyer

I like these nonfiction books where everything that is interesting about them is lost in that catch-all description of their "about"-ness.

Geoff Dyer

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About Books Catch Description Everything Interesting Like Lost Nonfiction Them

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Geoff Dyer
English - Writer
Born: June 5, 1958

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

Well, this is a story about books." About books?" About accursed books, about a man who wrote them, about a character who broke out of the pages of anovel so that he could burn it, about a betrayal and a lost friendship. It's a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind." You talk like the jacket blurb of a Victorian novel, Daniel." That's probably because I work in a bookshop and I've seen too many. But this is a true story.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

To me, everything in the world comes down to two categories: "about-ness" and "is-ness". "About" represents or describes something, while "Is" is the thing itself.

David First

Nonfiction narratives are really powerful and valid in themselves. But one thing that you don't get sometimes from the more clinical or academic books or nonfiction books is that you don't get to hear the person's voice; you don't get them as individuals. You get a few quotes and you hear them as sort of a case study: numbers, examples, anecdotes, maybe a paragraph here, and that's about it.

Dave Eggers

I was obsessed with the Loch Ness Monster, I would look through these books in the library and dream about visiting Loch Ness one day... That stuff was really kind of what I loved as a kid.

Alex Hirsch

I like nonfiction books about people with wretched lives.

David Sedaris

People always ask what a book is about, as if it has to be about something. I don't want to write books that lend themselves to that sort of description. My books are more a kind of breaking-down.

Jonathan Safran Foer

When I get the possibility of using a character like Bruce Wayne or Dick Grayson, I try and think about what's most exciting or interesting about them as a person, so I try and think what they are at their core, or what piece of their psychology do I gravitate toward that I respect, and I'm excited by it when I read books about them.

Scott Snyder

What I'm really interested in, as a reader and as a writer, is the idea of the nonfiction book that is not defined by its content, by its "about"-ness. Where you read it irrespective of whether you're interested in the subject.

Geoff Dyer

I don't like my books being defined by their "about"-ness. So now the subtitle has just become a kind of strap-line on the cover.

Geoff Dyer

I read fantasy books like the Harry Potter books, 'Twilight,' also biographies, and I like to read about people who have been through stuff like wars or lost their families - real life stuff, you know? I like to read about their experiences and how they coped with that.

Wynter Gordon

I'm not a poet, but I was in the poetry program. And I'm also not much of a nonfiction writer, at least not in the standard sense of nonfiction, nor especially in the way we were thinking about nonfiction back then, in the late 90s.

John D'Agata

A man's bookcase will tell you everything you'll ever need to know about him," my father had told me more than once. "A businessman has business books and a dream has novels and books of poetry. Most women like reading about love, and a true revolutionary will have books about the minutiae of overthrowing the oppressor. A person with no books is inconsequential in a modern setting, but a peasant that reads is a prince in waiting.

Walter Mosley

Fiction allows for moral questioning, but through the back door. Personally, I like books that make you think - books you're still wondering about three days after you finish them; books you hand to a friend and say "Read this, so we can talk about it."

Jodi Picoult

My platform has been to reach reluctant readers. And one of the best ways I found to motivate them is to connect them with reading that interests them, to expand the definition of reading to include humor, science fiction/fantasy, nonfiction, graphic novels, wordless books, audio books and comic books.

Jon Scieszka

They are either people of faith who have lost their faith from reading my books, or they are people who had already lost their faith, and something about my books encouraged them to affirm that.

Richard Dawkins

A Quote by Geoff Dyer

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