A Quote by Geoff Dyer

What I don't like is constructing a book that fits in with any kind of generic template, whether it's fiction or nonfiction.

Geoff Dyer

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Any Book Fiction Fits Generic Kind Like Nonfiction Whether

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Geoff Dyer
English - Writer
Born: June 5, 1958

I'm bothered, as a reader, when I feel the writer is filling in too much. Again, whether it's nonfiction or fiction, I think writers are providing a kind of template or platform for thinking and imagining.

Lynne Tillman

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

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've found that in fiction - and this is just the kind of writer I am - I can't really work from an outline. I have a vague idea of the characters at the beginning of the book, and then I have a vague idea of whatever the end of the book will be, but I can't approach creative nonfiction like that.

Jesmyn Ward

Songwriting is just like any other kind of writing - it's either fiction or nonfiction. You can even get into philosophy and politics, which I've done on occasion.

J. J. Cale

Politically I also don't believe anymore that we can only have one voice to a story, it's like having one radio station to represent a country. You want the politics of any complicated situation to be complicated in a book of fiction or nonfiction.

Michael Ondaatje

Some people don't like my fiction, because they prefer the nonfiction. But moving around keeps the work fresh for me and, hopefully, for my one or two readers who follow me from book to book!

Colson Whitehead

I'm just trying to avoid any sort of generic kind of music - I don't want to do generic jazz or fusion.

Andy Summers

When I read any book, if it's really good I get lost in the writing whether it's fiction or non-fiction. I'm in the story not thinking about who wrote it.

Jeff Feuerzeig

I think one of the reasons that I like fiction versus nonfiction is that I myself can kind of disappear from the story.

Celeste Ng

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.

Stanley Elkin

We approach nonfiction at a much different level than we approach fiction or poetry or drama: that there's almost no room for metaphor. We expect the "I" in any nonfiction text to be an autobiographical "I" when there is a history in the essay of the "I" being a persona.

John D'Agata

I'd be surprised if non-fiction writers hate to be interviewed. We all hate them, because there's really nothing to say except "Read the book." Right? At least with non-fiction, you can kind of convey some information, and people can decide for themselves whether they want more of that kind of information. But with a novel, what am I going to do?

Jonathan Franzen

Whether it's fiction or nonfiction, writing takes me to another world.

Leonard Mlodinow

I believe every time you film anybody, you create reality with that person - whether it's fiction or nonfiction.

Joshua Oppenheimer

As I started to read nonfiction in the mid '70s, I discovered, holy cow, there was a lot of imaginative nonfiction. Not the kind where people use composite characters and invented quotes. I hate that kind of nonfiction. But imaginative in the sense that good writing and unexpected structure and vivid reporting could be combined with presenting facts.

David Quammen

A Quote by Geoff Dyer

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