Non Fiction Quotes - Page 5

• I'm writing another novel and I know what I'm going to do after, which may be something more like this again, maybe some strange mixture of fiction and non-fiction.

  Penelope Lively

  Writing, Fiction, Mixtures

  "'I'm not a historian but I can get obsessively interested in the past'". Interview with Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. August 25, 2001.

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• I like to read biographies of authors that I love, like Richard Yates. I also like to see what non-fiction authors are out there. My bible is Something Happened. It's one of the greatest books I've ever read. But if I don't read a Dostoevsky soon I'm going to kill myself.

  Richard Lewis

  Book, Biographies, Fiction

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• Read non-fiction. History, biology, entomology, mineralogy, paleontology. Get a bodyguard and do fieldwork. Find your inner fish. Don't publish too soon. Not before you have read Thomas Mann in any case. Learn by copying, sentence by sentence some of the masters. Copy Coetzee's or Sebald's sentences and see what happens to your story. Consider creative non-fiction if you want to stay in South Africa. It might be the way to go. Never neglect back and hamstring exercises, otherwise you won't be able to write your novel. One needs one's buttocks to think.

  Marlene van Niekerk

  Writing, Exercise, Thinking

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• When you play a non-fiction character it is more responsibility than when you are playing a fiction character because that person lived, and you do want to pay respect to that.

  Bryan Cranston

  Character, Responsibility, Play

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• It's very hard to be a screenwriter. I remember getting a couple of awards. I got a PEN West award a million years ago when I did Running on Empty, and I sat in the room with all these writers. They wrote everything from novels to non-fiction to children's books to journalism - any kind of writing - and I realized that there was no one in the room who would ever read anything I'd written.

  Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal

  Running, Children, Couple

  "Naomi Foner and the Importance of Being Earnest". Interview with Emma Brown, www.interviewmagazine.com. July 22, 2014.

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• I use non-fiction work written by Whites in my research. It's indispensable. That wasn't the problem. I said that "The Wire" was a cliché! It's like my writing a series about Jewish life and casting all of the characters as inside traders.

  Ishmael Reed

  Writing, Character, Wire

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• In high school, in 1956, at the age of sixteen, we were not taught "creative writing." We were taught literature and grammar. So no one ever told me I couldn't write both prose and poetry, and I started out writing all the things I still write: poetry, prose fiction - which took me longer to get published - and non-fiction prose.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, School, Prose And Poetry

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• When you're not doing fiction, there's a limit to how much illustrating you can do with your work. I mean, you can do fine. There are great non-fiction writers, but people aren't necessarily going to say anything that reveals them as much as a picture might. Even their surroundings, in lot of cases, the things that meant the most to me were the things I noticed in their houses. I was always looking, as much as I was listening to them. I was looking around for clues as to why I was there.

  Miranda July

  Mean, People, House

  Source: therumpus.net

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• One would expect an actress to stand onscreen mostly as a caricature. If she would say, "I'm selling shoes," you would believe her. She says it and it creates this fiction, non-fiction perception of the film. People believe it because she says it. If she said, "I'm a butcher," people would believe it too, I think.

  Isabelle Huppert

  Believe, Thinking, Shoes

  "Isabelle by Isabelle". Interview with Colleen Kelsey, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 8, 2016.

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• Many Americans have never owned a book. And others have never owned a non-fiction book. Providing them with a 300-page paperback would get them started, maybe. And even if it didn't, at least they'd own that one. So that's a serious problem.

  James W. Loewen

  Book, Fiction, Pages

  "Oh What a Web Textbooks Weave…". Interview with Daniel Falcone, truthout.org. August 12, 2013.

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• I always say that writing non-fiction versus writing fiction is a bit like architecture versus abstract painting.

  Andrew Lam

  Writing, Abstract Painting, Fiction

  "‘Birds of Paradise Lost’: A Conversation With Author Andrew Lam". Interview with Anna Challet, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 5, 2013.

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• In non-fiction you have to stay true to historical events, be they personal or national .

  Andrew Lam

  Historical, Events, Fiction

  "‘Birds of Paradise Lost’: A Conversation With Author Andrew Lam". Interview with Anna Challet, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 5, 2013.

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• I'm very interested in film making. It's telling a story, fiction or non-fiction. I have been filmed quite a lot. Contrary to popular belief, filming isn't glamorous. It can be wearingly repetitious, as the same shot is taken over and over again.

  Stephen Hawking

  Taken, Fiction, Stories

  "Stephen Hawking Reveals What He REALLY Thought Of Eddie Redmayne In 'The Theory Of Everything'". The Huffington Post UK Interview, www.huffingtonpost.co.uk. August 5, 2015.

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• My documentaries have always been very much constructed in the spirit of dominant cinema. From the time I started making non-fiction, I was mainly interested in designing and creating documentaries like fiction, so it was a natural evolution to try and embark on doing a dramatic narrative.

  Brett Morgen

  Creating, Design, Trying

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I try and make non-fiction films that feel like fiction, so I'm always looking for the subtext and that's what really excites me.

  Brett Morgen

  Trying, Fiction, Film

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I just think there's something in the non-fiction form that allows you to see things clearly, if you're patient.

  Robert Greene

  Thinking, Fiction, Patient

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