Geoff Dyer Quotes

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I want to stress, this is the experience-growing up in a working-class family-that defined me and continues to define me. It's the core of my being. And it explains, incidentally, a good deal about my love of America.

Geoff Dyer

Growing Up, Stress, Class

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One's happiness is very largely a question of state of mind rather than the world you are looking at.

Geoff Dyer

Mind, World, States

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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The ideal is to feel at home anywhere, everywhere.

Geoff Dyer

Travel, Home, Feels

Geoff Dyer (2014). “Paris Trance: A Romance”, p.95, Macmillan

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Nine times out of 10, the most charming thing to say in any given situation will be the exact opposite of what one really feels.

Geoff Dyer

Opposites, Nine, Charming

Geoff Dyer (2014). “Another Great Day at Sea: Life Aboard the USS George H. W. Bush”, p.27, Canongate Books

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To be interested in something is to be involved in what is essentially a stressful relationship with that thing, to suffer anxiety on its behalf.

Geoff Dyer

Anxiety, Suffering, Stressful

Geoff Dyer (2014). “Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence”, p.205, North Point Press

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The perfect life, the perfect lie, I realised after Christmas, is one which prevents you from doing that which you would ideally have done (painted, say, or written unpublishable poetry) but which, in fact, you have no wish to do. People need to feel that they have been thwarted by circumstances from pursuing the life which, had they led it, they would not have wanted; whereas the life they really want is precisely a compound of all those thwarting circumstances.

Geoff Dyer

Lying, Perfect, People

Geoff Dyer (2012). “Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D. H. Lawrence”, p.81, Canongate Books

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He [Thelonious Monk] played each note as though astonished by the previous one, as though every touch of his fingers on the keyboard was correcting an error and this touch in turn became an error to be corrected and so the tune never quite ended up the way it was meant to.

Geoff Dyer

Errors, Tunes, Never Quit

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Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire.

Geoff Dyer

Regret, Writing, Desire

"Ten rules for writing fiction". The Guardian Interview, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

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All the best essays are epistemological journeys from ignorance or curiosity to knowledge.

Geoff Dyer

Ignorance, Journey, Curiosity

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Have more than one idea on the go at any one time. If it's a choice between writing a book and doing nothing I will always choose the latter. It's only if I have an idea for two books that I choose one rather than the other. I always have to feel that I'm bunking off from something.

Geoff Dyer

Book, Writing, Ideas

"Ten rules for writing fiction" by Geoff Dyer, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

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I guess that as life is speeded up and our capacity for concentration is being nibbled away at by all the obvious things, that leads us actually to be more susceptible to boredom.

Geoff Dyer

Obvious Things, Boredom, Life Is

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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I would hope that nothing that I write would ever seem earnest because I subscribe absolutely to Franz Nietzsche's claim when he says, "Ah, earnestness, the sure sign of a slow mind." Earnest people are always a bit on the thick side in my experience.

Geoff Dyer

Writing, People, Mind

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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Life is bearable even when it's unbearable: that is what's so terrible, that is the unbearable thing about it.

Geoff Dyer

Unbearable, Life Is, Terrible

Geoff Dyer (2012). “Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D. H. Lawrence”, p.127, Canongate Books

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What I'm really interested in, as a reader and as a writer, is the idea of the nonfiction book that is not defined by its content, by its "about"-ness. Where you read it irrespective of whether you're interested in the subject.

Geoff Dyer

Book, Ideas, Nonfiction

Source: www.guernicamag.com

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Quite often, ambition operates on a level of irritation. Not even jealousy, just irritation.

Geoff Dyer

Ambition, Irritation, Levels

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When you are lonely, writing can keep you company. It is also a form of self-compensation, a way of making up for things—as opposed to making things up—that did not quite happen.

Geoff Dyer

Lonely, Writing, Self

Geoff Dyer (2007). “Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It”, p.13, Vintage

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[William] Eggleston's photographs look like they were taken by a Martian who lost the ticket for his flight home and ended up working at a gun shop in a small town near Memphis. On the weekend he searches for the ticket - it must be somewhere - with a haphazard thoroughness that confounds established methods of investigation.

Geoff Dyer

Taken, Home, Weekend

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Nicholson Baker talks about the way in which the most successful nonfiction books are those that can be boiled down into an argument so that everybody can wade in with an opinion without having to undergo the inconvenience of having to read the book itself. The more you can condense it, the better.

Geoff Dyer

Book, Successful, Opinion

Source: www.guernicamag.com

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The only distinction I'd make is between film and telly, I guess. "Film," "movies," and "cinema" are all synonyms as far as I'm concerned; but telly is different. It's just a plodding we've-done-this-scene, we've-done-that-scene and it never becomes this new other thing.

Geoff Dyer

Different, Film, Synonym

Source: www.guernicamag.com

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Beware of clichés. Not just the clichés that Martin Amis is at war with. There are clichés of response as well as expression. There are clichés of observation and of thought - even of conception. Many novels, even quite a few adequately written ones, are clichés of form which conform to clichés of expectation.

Geoff Dyer

War, Writing, Expression

"Ten rules for writing fiction" by Geoff Dyer, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

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If you help them (the crew) create good memories, they'll forget all the bad stuff

Geoff Dyer

Memories, Stuff, Helping

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Never ride a bike with the brakes on. If something is proving too difficult, give up and do something else. Try to live without resort to perseverance.

Geoff Dyer

Giving Up, Trying, Persevere

"Ten rules for writing fiction", www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

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Foreign governments are going to be poring through all these Donald Trump tweets looking for - to try and discern what it means for foreign policy.

Geoff Dyer

Mean, Trying, Tweet

Source: www.pbs.org

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Like most writers I spend a lot of my time sort of thinking, "It's such agony, I can't do it."

Geoff Dyer

Thinking

Source: www.guernicamag.com

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It's this thing that's going on all the time - aging. Paul Auster quotes the poet George Opren on growing old: "What a strange thing to happen to a little boy." Which I think is so profound.

Geoff Dyer

Boys, Thinking, Profound

Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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Latest quotes from interviews

"I think, about the distinction between fiction and nonfiction. Fiction is not really about anything: it is what it is. But nonfiction - and you see this particularly with something like the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction - nonfiction we define in relation to what it's about. So, Stalingrad by Antony Beevor. It's "about" Stalingrad. Or, here's a book by Claire Tomalin: it's "about" Charles Dickens."

- Geoff Dyer,

www.guernicamag.com, added Dec 12, 2017

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Geoff Dyer

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Born: June 5, 1958
Occupation: Writer
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