Geoff Dyer Quotes
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Physical violence is always a bore in films today. We don't see how much it hurts. We don't learn the true consequences of it.
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What I've really liked doing is combining what you might call art criticism or music criticism with something that is happening in real life.
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Once you've got through immigration, one is always made to feel very welcome in America, once they've let you in. It's a great place to be.
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I've always had this belief that you want to write about universal truths.
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We are moving beyond the non-fiction novel to different kinds of narrative art, different forms of cognition. Loaded with moral and political point, narrative has been recalibrated to record, honour, and protest the latest historically specific instance of futility and mess.
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In many ways, I was a typical young guy out of college. I was at Oxford, where every night there'd be a late showing of some great film.
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I love festivals, period.
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You read 'Stalingrad' by Antony Beevor because you're interested in the Second World War or Russia or whatever.
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I am still moved by passages of Marx: the 'Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right,' for example, where, after the famous line about religion being 'the opium of the people,' he goes on to call it 'the heart of a heartless world.'
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Once you turn forty...the whole world is water off a duck’s back. Once you turn forty you realize that life is there to be wasted. (p. 165).
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Ruins-antique ruins at least-are what is left when history has moved on. They are no longer at the mercy of history, only of time. (p. 207).
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I didn't read much of anything till I was 15, except Alistair MacLean and Michael Moorcock - the sword and sorcery novels - when I was about 13 or 14.
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Stories don't interest me.
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The essence of my character is an inability to get used to things. This, in fact, is the one thing I have grown accustomed to: an inability to get used to things.
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For me, a great joke is an idea expressed in extremely concentrated form.
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The lesson of travel seems to be so banal, but so great, which is that people are just so amazingly decent the world over. Given the disparity of income and wealth, it's amazing not just that you don't get robbed everywhere - it's amazing you don't get eaten.
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I'm incredibly competitive in all sports in a way that is so mystifying to my wife because she grew up playing the violin and piano. I've always been like that.
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The person doing the learning is the person writing the book as much as the person reading it.
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When I'm writing, quite often I start having a good time when I see there's a chance to make myself look like a real jerk. I start chuckling and having an interesting, rather than a boring, time.
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We still go to nonfiction for content. And if it's well-written, that's a bonus. But we don't often talk about the nonfiction work of art. That's what I'm very interested in.
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We have in our heads a pretty well-defined narrative of the First World War, and there are certain events that are obviously key.
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Sharing a room with one person is worse than sharing with six, and sharing with six is in some ways worse than sharing with sixty.
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Have you ever stayed at the Four Seasons Hotel in Mumbai? I'd warmly recommend it. It's super luxurious, and right next door, there's a classic slum. So you can do a quick slum tour and get back to your sanctuary without any inconvenience but with some excellent snaps.
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I think I can recognize when a piece is at a state of completion.