Nonfiction Quotes - Page 7

• It's hard to do fiction and nonfiction simultaneously.

  Erica Jong

  Fiction, Fiction And Nonfiction, Hard

  "Oprah, Kitty and Me" by Erica Jong, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 13, 2010.

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

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Discipline, Stories, Sticks

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• My entire career, in fiction or nonfiction, I have reported and written about people who are not like me.

  Tom Wolfe

  Careers, People, Fiction

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• All fiction, if it's successful, is going to appeal to the emotions. Emotion is really what fiction is all about. That's not to say fiction can't be thoughtful, or present some interesting or provocative ideas to make us think. But if you want to present an intellectual argument, nonfiction is a better tool. You can drive a nail with a shoe but a hammer is a better tool for that. But fiction is about emotional resonance, about making us feel things on a primal and visceral level.

  George R. R. Martin

  Writing, Successful, Thinking

  "A conversation with Game of Thrones author George RR Martin". Interview, www.smh.com.au. August 1, 2011.

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• Writing is writing, and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and nonfiction. And even there, who can be sure?

  Tanith Lee

  Writing, Scary, Atheism

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• You do not conceive a novel as easily as you conceive a child, nor even half as easily as you create nonfiction work. A journalist amasses facts, anecdotes and interviews with top brass. Enough of these add up to a book. A novelist demands quite different things. He has to find himself in his materials, to know for sure how he would feel and act and the events he writes about. In addition, he requires a catalyst — a person, idea, or emotion which coalesces his ingredients and makes them jell into a solid purpose.

  Zelda Popkin

  Children, Book, Writing

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• If you wrote about sex the way Jim [Salter] writes about sex in nonfiction, you would be a sociopath.

  Lorin Stein

  Sex, Writing, Would Be

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• I don't think the potential for comics in nonfiction has been exploited nearly as much as it could be.

  Scott McCloud

  Thinking, Has Beens

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• If you go through any newspaper or magazine and look for active, kicking verbs in the sentences, you will realize that this lack of well used verbs is the main trouble with modern English writing. Almost all nonfiction nowadays is written in a sort of pale, colorless sauce of passives and infinitives, motionless and flat as paper.

  Rudolf Flesch

  Writing, Editing, Kicking

  Rudolf Flesch (1946). “The Art of Plain Talk”

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• Inexperienced fiction and creative nonfiction writers are often told to show, not tell - to write scenes, dramatize, cut exposition, cut summary - but it can be misguided advice. Good prose almost always requires both showing and telling, scenes and summary, the two basic components of creative prose

  Laurie Alberts

  Writing, Cutting, Creative Nonfiction

  Laurie Alberts (2010). “Showing & Telling: Learn How to Show & When to Tell for Powerful & Balanced Writing”, p.1, Writer's Digest Books

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• Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.

  Patti Smith

  Beautiful, Book, Acceptance

  "National Book Award for Patti Smith". National Book Award Acceptance speech, www.nytimes.com. November 17, 2010.

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• A great read; an exciting, frightening account of organized crime today. But like all important works of nonfiction, it goes further… This book is must reading for anyone with an interest in the enduring effects of the Vietnam War, the subject of crime in our streets, and the issue of personal responsibility in a harsh, chaotic world.

  Le Ly Hayslip

  War, Reading, Book

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• All nonfiction writers, whether they like it or not, are translators. The translator is the perfect journalist. The best journalism endeavors to convey an essential idea or story to an audience that knows very little about it, and that requires translation. To do this successfully, the writer must filter the idea through the prism of his eye, and his mind, and his writing style.

  Ilan Stavans

  Writing, Eye, Ideas

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• But I don't read a lot of fiction. I prefer the nonfiction stuff.

  Andy Richter

  Fiction, Stuff

  "Q+A: Andy Richter's Secret to Happiness". Interview with Eric Spitznagel, www.esquire.com. March 13, 2012.

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

  Aleksandar Hemon

  Fiction, Literature, Bosnians

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• Redheaded Peckerwood, which unerringly walks the fine line between fiction and nonfiction, is a disturbingly beautiful narrative about unfathomable violence and its place on the land

  Luc Sante

  Beautiful, Land, Lines

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• I contend that in the kind of nonfiction I write, and that other people also pursue, anything is permissible provided the reader knows what you're taking liberties with.

  William Least Heat-Moon

  Writing, People, Liberty

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• I read a lot of nonfiction - especially books about the brain.

  Ellen Pompeo

  Book, Brain

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• I've always considered myself a nonfiction artist.

  Jim Sanborn

  Artist

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• Nonfiction is never going to die.

  Tom Wolfe

  Dies

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• Interviewer: Have you ever considered writing nonfiction? Mary Doria Russell: Oh, honey, I did! Let's see...There was "A Reconsideration of the Evidence for Cannibalism at the Krapina Neandertal Site." That was a big hit. And who could ever forget "Cutmarks on the Engis II Calvarium"? Then there was "Browridge Development as a Function of Bending Stress in the Supraorbital Region." I got tons of reprint requests for that one. Trust me fiction is better.

  Mary Doria Russell

  Stress, Writing, Honey

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• 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.

  Arundhati Roy

  Morning, Believe, Thinking

  Arundhati Roy (2003). “War Talk”, p.45, South End Press

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• If you write nonfiction, a historical account of what really happened, first of all, it's always White men who do that and you don't have the voices that are really interesting to me, of the people who are not sheltered by the big umbrella of the establishment.

  Isabel Allende

  Writing, Men, White Man

  "Author Isabel Allende". "Tell Tavis" with Tavis Smiley, www.pbs.org. May 12, 2010.

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• I feel better off doing what I know how to do. I feel a strong element of fictional style in travel writing anyway. Some call it creative nonfiction.

  John Gimlette

  Strong, Writing, Feel Better

  Source: www.identitytheory.com

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• I think I can safely call 2012 average. Overall, it was a stronger year for nonfiction than fiction - a situation that would've surprised me back in January, when I was looking forward to big new novels from several authors I really love.

  David Edelstein

  Thinking, Average, Years

  Source: www.vulture.com

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