Nonfiction Quotes

• I still believe nonfiction is the most important literature to come out of the second half of the 20th century.

  Tom Wolfe

  Believe, Important, Half

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• It's the technique, I think, of writing a novel that is difficult for a nonfiction writer.

  E. O. Wilson

  Writing, Thinking, Technique

  "Ants and Answers: A Conversation with E. O. Wilson" by Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. January 15, 2010.

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• Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing.

  Joan Didion

  Writing, Sculpture, Research

  "Joan Didion, The Art of Nonfiction No. 1". Interview with Hilton Als, www.theparisreview.org. 2006.

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

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Stories, Use, Incredibles

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• In fiction, when you paint yourself into a corner, you can write a pair of suction cups onto the bottoms of your shoes and walk up the wall and out the skylight and see the sun breaking through the clouds. In nonfiction, you don't have that luxury.

  Tom Robbins

  Wall, Writing, Clouds

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• the challenge of nonfiction is to marry art and truth.

  Phyllis Rose

  Art, Challenges

  Phyllis Rose (1993). “The Penguin book of women's lives”, Viking Canada

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• In nonfiction, you have that limitation, that constraint, of telling the truth.

  Peter Matthiessen

  Fiction And Nonfiction, Telling The Truth, Constraints

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• People respect nonfiction but they read novels.

  E. O. Wilson

  People, Novel

  "EO Wilson: Our Greatest Biologist Writes A Novel, ‘Anthill’". Interview with Steve Ross, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 5, 2010.

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• I don't read for amusement, I read for enlightenment. I do a lot of reviewing, so I have a steady assignment of reading. I'm also a judge for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which gives awards to literature and nonfiction.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Book, Reading, Awards

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• In this time of the Internet and nonfiction, to be on an actual bookshelf in an actual bookstore is exciting in itself.

  Chris Abani

  Bookstores, Internet, Exciting

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• My platform has been to reach reluctant readers. And one of the best ways I found to motivate them is to connect them with reading that interests them, to expand the definition of reading to include humor, science fiction/fantasy, nonfiction, graphic novels, wordless books, audio books and comic books.

  Jon Scieszka

  Book, Reading, Fiction

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• Nonfiction speaks to the head. Fiction speaks to the heart. Poetry speaks to the soul. It's the essence of beauty. The essence of pain. It pleases the eye and the ear.

  Ellen Hopkins

  Pain, Heart, Eye

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• I come from a little island with the Caribbean Sea on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. I come from, really, nowhere, and for me, the fiction and the nonfiction, creative or otherwise, all come from the same place.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Ocean, Islands, Sea

  "Jamaica Kincaid talks about 'See Now Then'". Interview with Kevin Nance, www.chicagotribune.com. February 16, 2013.

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• I think the goal with any writing, but especially narrative nonfiction, is to put the blockade of putting your thoughts in this unnatural medium of print and then trying to reach through that and actually convey what's going on, what you think, and make people laugh and recognize themselves while doing it. Definitely the laughing thing.

  Sloane Crosley

  Writing, Thinking, People

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• I am consumed, or I have been consumed, with these issues of motherhood and the way we act out societal expectations and roles. So both my nonfiction and my fiction have been pretty much exclusively about that.

  Ayelet Waldman

  Motherhood, Issues, Expectations

  "Ayelet Waldman on Acting Your Age". Interview with Tim J Luddy, www.motherjones.com. November/December 2009.

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• There is always a certain leap of faith that editors have made with their nonfiction writers. If the trust is broken, things can get very embarrassing for the writers and the publisher.

  A. Scott Berg

  Editors, Broken, Leap Of Faith

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• One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.

  William Zinsser

  Writing, Shapes, Narrative

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

  E. L. Doctorow

  Fiction, Narrative, Fiction And Nonfiction

  New York Times Book Review, January 27, 1988.

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• I like nonfiction books about people with wretched lives.

  David Sedaris

  Book, People, Fiction And Nonfiction

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• I have written two nonfiction books, I'm embarrassed to say.

  Dirk Benedict

  Book, Two, Fiction And Nonfiction

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• My favourite all-time work of fiction: Lord of the Rings. My favourite all-time nonfiction book: Guns, Germs, and Steel. Ask me again next week, you'll get a different answer.

  Orson Scott Card

  Book, Gun, Next Week

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• I enjoy doing the research of nonfiction; that gives me some pleasure, being a detective again.

  Joseph Wambaugh

  Giving, Research, Fiction And Nonfiction

  Interview with Ann Bruns, www.bookreporter.com. May 17, 2002.

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• Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up.

  Joan Didion

  Writing, Different, Fiction

  FaceBook post by Joan Didion from Sep 23, 2011

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• I tend to read more nonfiction, really, because when I'm writing I don't like to read other fiction.

  Irvine Welsh

  Writing, Fiction, Literature

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• I like to get paid for doing basic research, so it's pleasant to write some nonfiction about it.

  Bruce Sterling

  Writing, Research, Fiction And Nonfiction

  "Inside the Military-Entertainment Complex". Interview with Krystian Woznicki, www.heise.de. June 16, 2002.

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