Latest Geoff Dyer Quotes from Interviews

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• 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

  Book, Thinking, Relation

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I like these nonfiction books where everything that is interesting about them is lost in that catch-all description of their "about"-ness.

  Geoff Dyer

  Book, Interesting

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I really like the George Clooney of Solaris also filmed by Andrei Tarkovsky, before Steven Soderbergh: that's very obviously sci-fi, and it seems to me a great film. But whatever pigeon-hole you put Stalker into you would both be increasing the risk of disappointing people and diminishing the film.

  Geoff Dyer

  People, Risk, Film

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I don't like my books being defined by their "about"-ness. So now the subtitle has just become a kind of strap-line on the cover.

  Geoff Dyer

  Book, Kind

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Nicholson Baker talks about the way in which the most successful nonfiction books are those that can be boiled down into an argument so that everybody can wade in with an opinion without having to undergo the inconvenience of having to read the book itself. The more you can condense it, the better.

  Geoff Dyer

  Book, Successful, Opinion

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• For so long I didn't have any kind of readership at all - I'd get published, but not read - the idea of writing for an audience is so anathema to me, it's never bothered me.

  Geoff Dyer

  Writing, Long, Kind

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• The only distinction I'd make is between film and telly, I guess. "Film," "movies," and "cinema" are all synonyms as far as I'm concerned; but telly is different. It's just a plodding we've-done-this-scene, we've-done-that-scene and it never becomes this new other thing.

  Geoff Dyer

  Different, Film, Synonym

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Like most writers I spend a lot of my time sort of thinking, "It's such agony, I can't do it."

  Geoff Dyer

  Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Whatever people may say about my books - and it always amazes me when people don't like them, but sometimes they don't - the epigraphs have always been top-drawer. I think having that at the outset protects me from a lot of potential problems.

  Geoff Dyer

  Book, Thinking, People

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I published so many books, which, for years, didn't get published here in America, at all - and which barely got any attention in England. So it wasn't going to take much to make me feel suddenly famous. So - yeah - after 20 years, I'm an overnight success.

  Geoff Dyer

  Book, Attention

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• There's something about New York. You can get a nice feeling of belonging as a writer here. It's probably the best city on Earth like that. I miss the wisecracking of New York.

  Geoff Dyer

  Nice, Missing, Feelings

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Getting too much money too soon can be really bad. There's a balance to be kept - the right balance between new experience and a certain stability in one's life. I'm conscious of all these things in a way that, earlier on, I was only conscious of circumstantial stuff, like, money.

  Geoff Dyer

  Balance, Conscious, Stability

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• In the '80s, the world I was living in wasn't this world of consumption. There wasn't that much to buy, really. Actually I'm still struck by that. There's not an awful lot of stuff I want. Somebody quotes Diogenes, who's walking around saying, "How many things there are in the marketplace of which Diogenes has no need." I always feel that. Except of course when you're living in Venice, California and you see all these lovely houses!

  Geoff Dyer

  House, Lovely, World

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I've never really liked L.A., because of its sprawl.

  Geoff Dyer

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• There's always something impressive when people are giving themselves to their job absolutely. The military thing - I was conscious that their routine, their way of living is so opposite to mine. In some ways their life seemed intolerable to me. But, mine would be to them, too, because this strangely laissez-faire life of mine actually comes with its obligations as well.

  Geoff Dyer

  Military, Giving, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• All sorts of things can keep one awake. But as you get older - this is what the stroke thing really brought home to me - this thing that I never paid attention to: my brain. I've always been conscious that, of course, after a night of getting stoned, my head would feel foggy; if I got drunk the night before I'd be hungover. But that was the extent of my concern about my brain. And then with the stroke thing, it made me realize, "God! That's my main source of income." So it relates actually to your other question about growing old.

  Geoff Dyer

  Home, Night, Drunk

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I would agree on the aging thing. Because, at a certain point, once you start noticing it, it is your subject. And I know young that people, when they get to 30, say, "Oh, I'm so old." But actually, around 50, you do become conscious of it.

  Geoff Dyer

  People, Aging, Conscious

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• It's this thing that's going on all the time - aging. Paul Auster quotes the poet George Opren on growing old: "What a strange thing to happen to a little boy." Which I think is so profound.

  Geoff Dyer

  Boys, Thinking, Profound

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I'd have no rituals, but I'm a person of compulsive habit. That's just some awful residue of a ritual. And one of the reasons for that is my living this life, which is otherwise so free of obligations. It's not at all unusual for anybody who's independently employed to crave a way of living whereby they create the structures without which their lives would otherwise start slopping around all over the place.

  Geoff Dyer

  Habit, Reason, Unusual

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I always hope to come up with a style of writing that's appropriate to the material and I felt like this was. And then there's plenty of - I don't know if it's the right word but - lampooning, but it's always at my expense.

  Geoff Dyer

  Writing, Style, Plenty

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I would hope that nothing that I write would ever seem earnest because I subscribe absolutely to Franz Nietzsche's claim when he says, "Ah, earnestness, the sure sign of a slow mind." Earnest people are always a bit on the thick side in my experience.

  Geoff Dyer

  Writing, People, Mind

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I think I can recognize when a piece is at a state of completion. I always say to my wife, "Oh yeah, it's roughly finished." I've got it there. And then there's that whole other phase of moving on to properly amp up the sentences and sometimes to move stuff around as well.

  Geoff Dyer

  Moving, Thinking, Wife

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I've never been much drawn towards satire of any kind. I don't like that style whereby you kind of stitch people up. But the deeper thing is that I just find these people so impressive and admirable.

  Geoff Dyer

  People, Style, Kind

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• The thing that strikes me, from looking at the names so far in the Donald Trump's Cabinet on the foreign policy side, is the one thing that unites them - and that's General James Mattis at the Pentagon, Mike Pompeo at the CIA, even Mitt Romney to become secretary of state - they're all very, very hawkish on Iran.

  Geoff Dyer

  Cia, Foreign Policy, Policy

  Source: www.pbs.org

• The one thing that you can say about the new Cabinet Donald Trump is putting together. That seems to be one of the coherent themes. They're very, very skeptical about Iran.

  Geoff Dyer

  Together, Skeptical

  Source: www.pbs.org