Nonfiction Quotes
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Nonfiction that uses novelistic devices and strategies to shape the work. That's material that I really like.
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My work was entirely nonfiction.
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There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative.
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It's the technique, I think, of writing a novel that is difficult for a nonfiction writer.
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Creative non-fiction is such a liberating genre because it allows the non-fiction writer, whether he or she be journalist or essayist, to use all of the techniques of the fiction writer and all of the ideas, creative approaches, that fiction writers get a chance to use, but they have to use it in a true story.
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People respect nonfiction but they read novels.
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I read nonfiction almost exclusively – both for research and also for pleasure. When I read fiction, it's almost always in the thriller genre, and it needs to rivet me in the opening few chapters.
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It's hard to do fiction and nonfiction simultaneously.
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I tend to read non-fiction.
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After the Dance was my first attempt at nonfiction. I'd never really participated in carnival, and I really wanted to go. It sounded like a wonderfully fun thing to do. And I wanted to write something happy about Haiti, something celebratory. And going to carnival gave me a chance to do that, because it is one of the instances in Haiti when people shed their class separation and come together.
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I remember reading an interview with a writer who said that in nonfiction if you have one lie it sort of messes it up. But in fiction the real details give you so much more credibility, because people do so much research just to write fiction. In fiction you're trying to recreate something lifelike.
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I love to read nonfiction and memoir, but I'm mostly interested in the piece of writing more than the person.
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I consider myself a writer, foremost - a nonfiction writer.
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After writing fiction for so long, I like the discovery element of nonfiction, in the sense that when you find the right information, it feels like gold.
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I used to be a freelance journalist, so I had to write fast, but I always found writing nonfiction constraining. I like the freedom of fiction, where I get to invent everything, and tidy, conclusive endings are within my control.
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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.
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A fictional character living in a nonfiction world.
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I often read nonfiction, and some of my ideas begin there.
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In early drafts, one of the trickiest things for me to do was to realize that the techniques and devices that make readable and compelling nonfiction are not always identical to the ones that make good fiction.
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Every time I write a nonfiction book I get sued.
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I started writing nonfiction because nonfiction is well-suited to subjects that, if you wrote them as fiction, people would say, "I don't believe this. This is a little outlandish".
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We like nonfiction, and we live in fictitious times.
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One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.
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In fiction, you learn about pacing and how to build tension - which is something you want in a really good nonfiction feature article as well.
