Nonfiction Quotes - Page 8

• Nonfiction is easy and fiction is hard.

  Ann Patchett

  Fiction, Easy, Hard

  "Ann Patchett lets readers into her personal life in new collection of essays". "PBS NewsHour" with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. December 13, 2013.

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• The hardest piece of nonfiction I ever wrote isn't anywhere close to the easiest piece of fiction I never wrote.

  Ann Patchett

  Fiction, Pieces, Hardest

  "Ann Patchett lets readers into her personal life in new collection of essays". "PBS NewsHour" with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. December 13, 2013.

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• I like European and South American literature, but mostly I read nonfiction.

  Jessa Crispin

  Literature, American Literature, South

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I give this book 5 Stars and highly recommend it to all fiction, nonfiction, and poetry writers, aspiring writers, bloggers or journalists.

  Sunny

  Stars, Book, Giving

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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 write funny nonfiction adventure books about crazy, serious worlds.

  Jon Ronson

  Crazy, Book, Adventure

  Source: blog.exclus1ves.co.za

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• I'm just too lazy. I wish I could be someone that has wild affairs - all of my favorite nonfiction novels are about these wild affairs and postmarital agonistes - but to be honest, I'm someone that doesn't deal well with instability.

  Kate Zambreno

  Lazy, Wish, Honest

  Source: therumpus.net

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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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• Ever hear the expression "write what you know?" My version says "write what you want to know." If you want to know about the history of Spain, write about the history of Spain - fiction or nonfiction. If your fascinated by the old west, maybe your character lives there.

  Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  Writing, Character, Expression

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• To be creative means to connect. It's to abolish the gap between the body, the mind and the soul, between science and art, between fiction and nonfiction.

  Nawal El Saadawi

  Art, Mean, Creative Nonfiction

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• A lot of attention has been paid in Latin America to the new generation of nonfiction writers, authors like Julio Villanueva Chang, Diego Osorno, Cristóbal Peña, Gabriela Wiener, Leila Guerriero, Cristian Alarcón, among others. These are writers doing important, groundbreaking work. So the talent is there, as is the habit of radio listenership, and what we propose to do is unite the two. We want to have these immensely gifted journalists - men and women who've already revitalized the long-form narrative - we want them to tell their stories in sound.

  Daniel Alarcon

  Latin, Men, Two

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I'm drawn to fiction that hints at nonfiction, that blurs or seems to blur the boundaries between invention and autobiography.

  Garth Greenwell

  Hints, Boundaries, Invention

  Source: therumpus.net

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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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• The other reason I didn't want to fictionalize it is because one of the main points of publishing a memoir in nonfiction was that I wanted to write about what had been a very lonely experience. The books that most saved my life as a kid were the ones that articulated lonely experiences that I had thought were mine alone.

  Melissa Febos

  Lonely, Book, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I'm not a poet, but I was in the poetry program. And I'm also not much of a nonfiction writer, at least not in the standard sense of nonfiction, nor especially in the way we were thinking about nonfiction back then, in the late 90s.

  John D'Agata

  Thinking, Way, Poet

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• As a student at the time, I kind of felt like my only options as a nonfiction writer were to either jump on the personal essay bus or linger back at the station, hoping that some other heretofore unknown mode of transportation was going to magically show up to take me where I wanted to go.

  John D'Agata

  Students, Kind, Transportation

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Nonfiction is never going to die.

  Tom Wolfe

  Dies

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• Blogging has helped create an expanded awareness of the creative nonfiction genre, generally. But I suspect many bloggers continue to be unaware that they are (or have the potential to be) "literary" or "artful."

  Lee Gutkind

  Creative Nonfiction, Blogging, Awareness

  Source: www.luxlotus.com

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• I feel like I'm almost ready to write fiction about the border. But even after 10 years of writing nonfiction about it, I don't think I know quite enough to do it right.

  William T. Vollmann

  Writing, Thinking, Years

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• I'd never written nonfiction about the war on drugs, but I know a tremendous amount about it: I taught a class on it for seven years. I was putting into words the stuff I was teaching, and I was writing it up and thought, "Dude, you're writing a book."

  Ayelet Waldman

  War, Teaching, Book

  "The Case for Taking a Very Little Bit of LSD Nearly Every Day". Interview with Jenny Luna, www.motherjones.com. January 10, 2017.

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• Maybe I have a one-track mind, but the best writers and thinkers are focusing on nonfiction these days; this is the genre where a writer can make a mark and change an aspect of the world - much more so than in fiction.

  Lee Gutkind

  Track, Mind, Fiction

  Source: www.luxlotus.com

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• I think all of the best nonfiction that has ever been made comes from the result of someone who can't stop thinking about a certain topic - a very specific aspect of a certain topic in some cases. And second, they got really good at figuring out what they had to say about it.

  Merlin Mann

  Pain, Thinking, Topics

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• I enjoy the writings of all of these authors and they have been very inspirational for me. But I think that it is important as writers of metaphysical, New Age, occult fiction and nonfiction to not take ourselves too seriously.

  Frederick Lenz

  Writing, Thinking, Important

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• 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.

  Lee Gutkind

  Passion, Views, Two

  Source: speechwriting-ghostwriting.typepad.com

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• I don't have time to read nonfiction.

  W. P. Kinsella

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