Top 1200 Writing Nonfiction Quotes & Sayings - Page 3

I like nonfiction books about people with wretched lives.

When I'm writing a novel or doing other serious writing work, I do it on a schedule that dictates writing either 2,000 words a day or writing until noon. After I hit whichever mark comes first, then I can give my attention to everything else I have to do.

Ah, well, I have no talent for nonfiction, that's my problem.

When I wrote nonfiction, my best work was the really personal stuff.

I read a lot of nonfiction - especially books about the brain.

I've always considered myself a nonfiction artist.

There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative.

The expectations for a nonfiction writer are awful high.

I find that my reading, particularly nonfiction, can inspire a poem as well as anything else.

If you are making money writing, you are doing great. If you can support yourself writing, you are a success. I don't care if you're writing textbooks or Pulitzer Prize-winning articles for weighty publications of world renown: If you're writing and it's paying the bills, consider yourself a successful writer.

I really enjoy doing both, but I didn't write nonfiction until 1994.

I write and teach creative nonfiction. I was a reporter.

I used to distinguish between my fiction and nonfiction in terms of superiority or inferiority.

I do think that calling a book nonfiction affirms a kind of responsibility to an attempt at truth.

Fiction is harder for me than nonfiction - more gratifying, as a result, when it succeeds.

I often read nonfiction, and some of my ideas begin there.

I find that nonfiction writers are the likeliest to turn out interesting novels.

I think writing for me has always been a matter of fear. Writing is fear and not writing is fear. I am afraid of writing and then I'm afraid of not writing.

Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader's mind - -vividly, forcefully.

I finish two books a week, mostly nonfiction.

But with nonfiction, the task is very straightforward: Do the research, tell the story.

I want a nonfiction that explores our shifting, unstable, multiform, evanescent experience in and of the world.

In nonfiction, you have that limitation, that constraint, of telling the truth.

the challenge of nonfiction is to marry art and truth.

Most books aren't pure nonfiction or fiction.

Writing as writing. Writing as rioting. Writing as righting. On the best days, all three.

Fiction and nonfiction, for me, involve very different processes.

I have written two nonfiction books, I'm embarrassed to say.

But I don't read a lot of fiction. I prefer the nonfiction stuff.

On the craft level, writing for children is not so different from writing for adults. You still have to have a story that moves forward. You still have to have the tools of the trade down. The difference arises in the knowledge of who you're writing for. This isn't necessary true of writing for adults.

I don't read that many novels, I'm more of a nonfiction fan.

I read a ton of nonfiction. I tend to read about a lot of very extreme situations, life-or-death situations. I'm very interested in books about Arctic exploration or about doomed Apollo missions. I tend to read a lot of nonfiction that's sort of hyperbolic and visceral. And then I kind of draw on my own personal experiences and my own sort of generic life experience, and I kind of try to feed my day-to-day reality that I have with sort of high stakes reference points that I read about. They're things everyone can relate to.

I like European and South American literature, but mostly I read nonfiction.

But with nonfiction, the task is very straightforward: Do the research, tell the story

I'm working on a nonfiction book on Nepal and a novel about diasporas.

I have a hard time writing. Most writers have a hard time writing. I have a harder time than most because I'm lazier than most. [...] The other problem I have is fear of writing. The act of writing puts you in confrontation with yourself, which is why I think writers assiduously avoid writing. [...] Not writing is more of a psychological problem than a writing problem. All the time I'm not writing I feel like a criminal. [...] It's horrible to feel felonious every second of the day. Especially when it goes on for years. It's much more relaxing actually to work.

You honor your writing space by recovering, if you are an addict. You honor your writing space by becoming an anxiety expert, a real pro at mindfulness and personal calming. You honor your writing space by affirming that you matter, that your writing life matters, and that your current writing project matters. You honor your writing space by entering it with this mantra: “I am ready to work.” You enter, grow quiet, and vanish into your writing.

People seem to want to read more nonfiction than fiction.

Essentially, I'm a storyteller, and I make my living by telling stories, be they music or nonfiction or fiction.

I don't like to read nonfiction. To me, fact is something I can look up.

Writing is really just a matter of writing a lot, writing consistently and having faith that you'll continue to get better and better. Sometimes, people think that if they don't display great talent and have some success right away, they won't succeed. But writing is about struggling through and learning and finding out what it is about writing itself that you really love.

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

Journalism is very much public writing, writing with an audience in mind, writing for publication, and frequently writing quickly. And I know that when I worked daily journalism it really affected my patience with literature, which I think requires reflection, and a different kind of engagement.

We like nonfiction, and we live in fictitious times.

People respect nonfiction but they read novels.

I read the same amount of nonfiction and fiction.

With nonfiction, I go in trying to be really honest about what my preconceptions are.

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

You can tell a more over-the-top incredible story if you use a nonfiction form.

I've written many nonfiction books, but that's a special gift.

I've written six novels and four pieces of nonfiction, so I don't really have a genre these days.

Nonfiction-wha t the hell, that just says, this is nongrapefruit we're having this morning.

I've written fiction... but the nonfiction has always received the most attention.

Every time I write a nonfiction book I get sued.

I write funny nonfiction adventure books about crazy, serious worlds.

Everybody is writing, writing, writing - worst of all, writing poetry. It'd be better if the whole tribe of the scribblers - every damned one of us - were sent off somewhere with tool chests to do some honest work.

I do think reading is the best practice for writing, along with writing all the time. I actually never liked writing on my own or in school until I'd had my blog for a while and realized I'd been writing every day for years.

I don't think the potential for comics in nonfiction has been exploited nearly as much as it could be.

When people speak to me of the torment of writing, I can think only of what it was like before I wrote: once writing meant writing and not thinking about writing, I knew nothing of any torment.

I never really understood the idea that nonfiction ought to be this dispensary of data that we have at the moment.