Geoff Dyer Quotes

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

If you're writing a book where you want to make a positive truth claim, then you should absolutely call it nonfiction or memoir. If you don't want to make that claim - if that's not what's important to you; if you're more interested in storytelling and interiority and interpersonal relationships than in objective, checkable facts about the world - then why wouldn't you call it a novel, and take advantage of what that gets you, of the extra freedom, of belonging to the tradition of the novel?

Most books aren't pure nonfiction or fiction.

I'm a commercial writer, not an author. Margaret Mitchell was an author. She wrote one book.

Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. I'm beginning to believe that vanity makes them think so. That it's actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us. The public narrative, the private narrative - they colonize us. They commission us. They insist on being told. Fiction and nonfiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons that I don't fully understand, fiction dances out of me, and nonfiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning.

I'm not a science-fiction writer. I've only written one book that's science fiction, and that's Fahrenheit 451. All the others are fantasy.

As a reader, I notice political views regardless of whether or not the book is fiction. What annoys me is when said views do nothing to advance the narrative.

Fiction isn't memoir and memoir isn't fiction.

Great writing can be done in biography, history, art.

A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.

To me there's no difference between a book of stories and a novel - they're just slightly different shapes.

There's always a bit of fiction in everything that I write.

I have assiduously avoided calling my books novels.

A good novel is a good novel, pointe finale. And I think what I'm writing is exactly that.

I like fiction and the kind of history that gives the grace and flavor of fiction to the past. No bloviation on current events, please. I can write that junk myself.

One important idea I hope is reflected in 'The Poe Shadow' is that fiction can add as much to history as nonfiction does.

I'm a novelist, not a social scientist or a commentator.

Fiction is my deepest love, but I love journalism, too. It keeps me thinking vigorously, and it reminds me that there is a world out there.

Sometimes the facts can get in the way of the telling of a good story. But they don't get in the way of the truth.

In my mind, there's not a great difference between what people call fiction and non-fiction. So in that sense, I'm like an early-18th-century person. I actually believe there's one way of writing.

Nonfiction, to me, feels like an argument, whereas a novel is like a series of questions.

Science fiction is about what could be but isn't; fantasy is about what couldn't be.

I'm a novelist at heart. My sole intention is to write the best novel possible. I don't think about the film potential at all.

Sometimes journalists ask me, "What's the message?" There is no message. I think that fiction should not be trying to give messages. Just tell a story.

I'm a fantasy writer. I don't do SF. This is important to me. If you're not clear on what genre you're in, everything gets muddled, and it's hard to know which rules you're breaking.