Frank D. Gilroy Quotes

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

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

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 never really considered writing something that was nonfiction.

And there are two types of stories. One type is one's own story. The other type is telling the stories of others. Thanks to this genre, writers of nonfiction can now use the tools of the reporter, the points of view and ear for dialog of a novelist, and the passion and wordplay of the poet.

For a while I just couldn't imagine that there was a place for me in nonfiction. I looked around at what we were calling nonfiction and I thought, "Maybe you do have to go to poetry in order to do this other weird thing in nonfiction."

All writers write about the past, and I try to make it come alive so you can see what happened.

Basically, I think of fiction and non-fiction as different ways of engaging with the world. You reach a point where you feel you have said all you possibly can, in reportage or a review essay or a reflection on history, which 'From the Ruins of Empire' was.

I write about true-life type things.

I write both fiction and nonfiction. I begin my fiction with the main character. The story comes later.

I coauthored my first nonfiction book by the time I was 25. I have been involved in nonfiction documentaries, newspapers, TV and internet since that time.

Nonfiction that uses novelistic devices and strategies to shape the work. That's material that I really like.

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

If you write memoir, it can't be about blame or hurt; it has to be creative.

The key for me with historical characters is they're interesting because they're human beings. A little bit of Hemingway goes a long way here, but journalists and writers should honestly look at their material and have a real interest, a real passion in what they want to write, and they should also have a lot of knowledge as well.

There's a lot of essay writing that could pass for journalism and journalism that could pass for essay. Some of it is just taxonomy.

Due to the sweeping time frame and the voices moving back and forth, the outline for 'The Invention of Wings' was the strangest one I've ever done. I created six large, separate outlines, one for each part of the book, and hung them around my study.

Nonfiction requires enormous discipline. You construct the terms of your story, and then you stick to them.

Robert Mapplethorpe asked me to write our story the day before he died. I had never written a book of nonfiction, and so it took me almost two decades to write that book.

Most of the things in 'The Things They Carried' didn't happen to me. Ninety-five percent of it's invented. It's not what occurred.

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.

There are people who are bound journalistically to a code of ethics that means they can't quote something that isn't sourced, whereas what I do is entirely unsourced. I effectively fictionalise history and yet somehow aim at a greater truth.

A book is either autobiography or a novel.

In journalism, a fact is just a fact. But in fiction, you have to build your case. It has to be made, step by step.

I feel I'm functioning at some level as a journalist because even though I write fiction, I'm trying to get the world accurate.