Non Fiction Quotes - Page 5

• I just think there's something in the non-fiction form that allows you to see things clearly, if you're patient.

  Robert Greene

  Thinking, Fiction, Patient

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• The goal in blogging/ business/ inspiring non-fiction is to share a truth, or at least a truth as the writer sees it. To not just share it, but to spread it and to cause change to happen. You can do that in at least three ways: with research (your own or reporting on others), by building and describing conceptual structures, or with stories that resonate.

  Seth Godin

  Goal, Three, Fiction

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• A book is a story, even if it's non-fiction, and once I've read it, I have the story with me inside my head always.

  Sara Sheridan

  Book, Fiction, Stories

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• One would expect an actress to stand onscreen mostly as a caricature. If she would say, "I'm selling shoes," you would believe her. She says it and it creates this fiction, non-fiction perception of the film. People believe it because she says it. If she said, "I'm a butcher," people would believe it too, I think.

  Isabelle Huppert

  Believe, Thinking, Shoes

  "Isabelle by Isabelle". Interview with Colleen Kelsey, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 8, 2016.

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• I was looking to do something non-fiction because I had done a strip, 'My Mom Was a Schizophrenic.' I really enjoyed the process of doing that strip, despite its subject matter. To do it I'd had to do a lot of research and reading and I figured I'd like to do that again.

  Chester Brown

  Mom, Reading, Fiction

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• Read non-fiction. History, biology, entomology, mineralogy, paleontology. Get a bodyguard and do fieldwork. Find your inner fish. Don't publish too soon. Not before you have read Thomas Mann in any case. Learn by copying, sentence by sentence some of the masters. Copy Coetzee's or Sebald's sentences and see what happens to your story. Consider creative non-fiction if you want to stay in South Africa. It might be the way to go. Never neglect back and hamstring exercises, otherwise you won't be able to write your novel. One needs one's buttocks to think.

  Marlene van Niekerk

  Writing, Exercise, Thinking

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• When you play a non-fiction character it is more responsibility than when you are playing a fiction character because that person lived, and you do want to pay respect to that.

  Bryan Cranston

  Character, Responsibility, Play

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• It's very hard to be a screenwriter. I remember getting a couple of awards. I got a PEN West award a million years ago when I did Running on Empty, and I sat in the room with all these writers. They wrote everything from novels to non-fiction to children's books to journalism - any kind of writing - and I realized that there was no one in the room who would ever read anything I'd written.

  Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal

  Running, Children, Couple

  "Naomi Foner and the Importance of Being Earnest". Interview with Emma Brown, www.interviewmagazine.com. July 22, 2014.

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• In high school, in 1956, at the age of sixteen, we were not taught "creative writing." We were taught literature and grammar. So no one ever told me I couldn't write both prose and poetry, and I started out writing all the things I still write: poetry, prose fiction - which took me longer to get published - and non-fiction prose.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, School, Prose And Poetry

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• When you're not doing fiction, there's a limit to how much illustrating you can do with your work. I mean, you can do fine. There are great non-fiction writers, but people aren't necessarily going to say anything that reveals them as much as a picture might. Even their surroundings, in lot of cases, the things that meant the most to me were the things I noticed in their houses. I was always looking, as much as I was listening to them. I was looking around for clues as to why I was there.

  Miranda July

  Mean, People, House

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I use non-fiction work written by Whites in my research. It's indispensable. That wasn't the problem. I said that "The Wire" was a cliché! It's like my writing a series about Jewish life and casting all of the characters as inside traders.

  Ishmael Reed

  Writing, Character, Wire

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• I like to read biographies of authors that I love, like Richard Yates. I also like to see what non-fiction authors are out there. My bible is Something Happened. It's one of the greatest books I've ever read. But if I don't read a Dostoevsky soon I'm going to kill myself.

  Richard Lewis

  Book, Biographies, Fiction

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• I'm writing another novel and I know what I'm going to do after, which may be something more like this again, maybe some strange mixture of fiction and non-fiction.

  Penelope Lively

  Writing, Fiction, Mixtures

  "'I'm not a historian but I can get obsessively interested in the past'". Interview with Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. August 25, 2001.

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• I have no interest in non-fiction. I don't read it and don't watch it and don't write it, other than a little journalistic column.

  W. P. Kinsella

  Writing, Watches, Fiction

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• I read a lot; fiction and non-fiction are the mediums I find most edifying and inspiring. I watch movies and listen to music and take lots and lots of walks. Nature is a nice reset button for me, it's how I get a lot of thinking done.

  Carrie Brownstein

  Nice, Thinking, Reset Button

  "Portlandia star Carrie Brownstein takes your questions". live.washingtonpost.com. January 11, 2012.

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• See, I have no journalism in my background, so I wasn't practised at research or writing non-fiction, nor at handling the truth in a journalistic way. Journalists know when to call a halt and write something, but I kept on looking for answers.

  John Thomas Sladek

  Writing, Fiction, Research

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