Nonfiction Quotes

Ironically, in today's marketplace successful nonfiction has to be unbelievable, while successful fiction must be believable.

But with nonfiction, the task is very straightforward: Do the research, tell the story.

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.

I like nonfiction books about people with wretched lives.

It's hard to do fiction and nonfiction simultaneously.

Nonfiction that uses novelistic devices and strategies to shape the work. That's material that I really like.

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.

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

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

I could talk more directly in a nonfiction voice than I could in fiction.

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

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

I don't actually have a one wellspring of inspiration. Though I'm most often inspired while reading - both fiction and nonfiction. I subscribe to National Geographic, Scientific American, Discover, and a slew of other magazines. And it is while reading articles for pleasure and interest that an interesting 'What if?' will pop into my head.

I used to distinguish between my fiction and nonfiction in terms of superiority or inferiority.