John D'Agata Quotes

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

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

When you deal with nonfiction you deal with human characters.

I write nonfiction in this thriller-esque style. I have all the facts; I research it. I have thousands of pages of court documents... I try to get inside my stories.

If uncovering the truth is the greatest challenge of nonfiction writing, it is also the greatest reward.

Nonfiction is more personal for me. It's more personal in that it's more direct, and actually it's always been more direct, even when I first started doing pieces.

Truth is stranger than nonfiction. And life is too interesting to be left to journalists. People have stories, but journalists have 'takes,' and it's their takes that usually win out when the stories are too complicated or, as happens, not complicated enough.

Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.

I like the facts. I find them interesting.

When guys do books or stories, all I like to see is the truth.

It's all storytelling, you know. That's what journalism is all about.

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

In terms of going back and forth between fiction and nonfiction - in which I'll include memoir, biography, and true crime - is that one relieves the other.

I think you can do a lot with fiction, and in some cases you can say even more in fiction than you can in straight-up documentary journalism.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.

Stories are not explanations of the world we live in. Science does that, and math does that. Our obligation as fiction writers is to enhance the mysteries.

I never really considered writing something that was nonfiction.

From fiction, you do not get to learn much because it is only imagination. Whereas, from non-fiction, people can understand and learn from the realities it covers.

There is certainly no want of journalistic ambition among the purveyors of what is now called 'long-form,' nor of novelistic technique brought to bear on nonfiction, nor of outrage.

The facts, even the real ones, must be imagined before they can be stated.

As I keep saying, fiction is truth. I think fiction is the truest thing there ever was.

The sum of a million facts is not the truth.

That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth.

Novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies every novelist attempts to tell the truth about the world.

Every fiction has its base in fact.