Non Fiction Quotes

I teach a non-fiction writing class at New York University, and one of my great pleasures is deciding on the syllabus. ~ Susan Orlean

Other animals are exceptionally good at identifying and reacting to predators, rivals and friends. They never act as if they believe that rivers or trees are inhabited by spirits who are watching. In all these ways, other animals continually demonstrate their working knowledge that they live in a world brimming with other minds as well as their knowledge of those minds' boundaries. their understanding seems more acute, pragmatic, and frankly, better than ours at distinguishing real from fake. So, I wonder, do humans really have a better developed Theory of Mind than other animals? ...Children talk to dolls for years, half believing or firmly believing that the doll hears and feels and is a worthy confidante. Many adults pray to statues, fervently believing that they're listening. ...All of this indicates a common human inability to distinguish conscious minds from inanimate objects, and evidence from nonsense. Children often talk to a fully imaginary friends whom they believe listens and has thoughts. Monotheism might be the adult version. ...In the world's most technologically advanced, most informed societies, a majority people take it for granted that disembodied spirits are watching, judging, and acting on them. Most leaders of modern nations trust that a Sky-God can be asked to protect their nation during disasters and conflicts with other nations. All of this is theory of mind gone wild, like an unguided fire hose spraying the whole universe with presumed consciousness. ~ Carl Safina

The universe is not a world of separate things and events but is a cosmos that is connected and coherent. The physical world and spiritual experience are both aspects of the same reality and man and the universe were one ~ Alexis Karpouzos

… our fates are profoundly intertwined. We have to take care of one another. ~ Wes Moore

I calculated how easy it would be to pull a chair next to the windowsill, climb up, and simply allow my body to fall four stories to the street. Then an inner voice broke in, There's got to be something more. Go find it. ~ Debra Moffitt

When you make choices, please remember: what is good for you but not good for others won't be good for you either, eventually; what's good for you and others but not good for the Earth won't be good for you or others either, eventually; what's good for you, others, and the Earth will be good for all. ~ Ilchi Lee

His life, measured in space and time, will take up a mere few lines, which my ignorance will abbreviate further. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

We're not here for a long time. We're here for a good time. ~ J.D. Chadwick

Once you realize that the imagination is non-fiction, the world is yours ~ Carl Henegan

Always maintain a steady eye on what you know is yours for the taking, and plot with all the energy you can muster to reach it. ~ Chris Erzfeld

It is simply much easier to infuse life, feeling, and higher truth into a novel than a non-fiction work, to find the license to write truth without being wedded to fact. ~ Jon Weisman

Depending on your own background and life experiences, this may or may not be new to you, but after an eight-to-twelve-hour day, white office workers often don't feel like they've spent enough time with each other. Therefore, they are prone to organizing pseudo-official company activities such as bowling or happy hour. ~ Baratunde R. Thurston

There's nothing quite as exciting or moving as the very finest literary non-fiction. ~ Catherine Jinks

I would like to imagine my life next to you, having fun and laughing at so many things, discovering new places, new people, new cultures, well, doing these kind of things mutually, enjoy spending time together. ~ Ikrame Selkani

You can think of your life as being a little like knitting. When you first begin, there is no shape to it, but you keep knitting with some goal in mind - to make a sweater, a sock, or whatever. Every stitch is like a thought that you add to the overall shape of your life. Eventually, thoughts lead to action and the form will emerge, if you can only keep your intent in mind. If you have no clear vision, however, you will end up with a random pile of knotted yarn ~ Ilchi Lee

I wasn't trained to write non-fiction. ~ Leila Aboulela

When I first met Billy I thought about sucking his eyes right out of their sockets. They're like turquoise gum drops. ~ Jo Treggiari

Our world desperately needs change. We all know this. The scope of the change ranges from our lifestyles to the direction of our civilization. When we acknowledge our greatness and start living it, when we open our hearts to the natural kindness and the caring for all beings that resides within us, all these necessary transformations can begin. ~ Ilchi Lee

Grace is a pre-existing condition. ~ David Finnegan-Hosey

You can tell within a sentence if something is fiction or non-fiction. You can tell in the artifice of the language or the care of the construction the difference between art and life. ~ Ethan Canin

It's funny because when I was growing up, I was really into science fiction and fantasy as a kid. And, when I first became a screenwriter, I ended up really just doing historical drama and non-fiction based stuff, like Band of Brothers and stuff that didn't get made, but was also non-fiction. ~ John Orloff

When push comes to shove we can afford to lose an arm or a leg, but I am operating on peoples thoughts and feelings... and if something goes wrong I can destroy that persons character... forever. ~ Henry Marsh

They shared a doom against which virtue was no defense ~ Truman Capote

Behind the door was where bad things happen. No matter how many blankets I used or extra pairs of panties I wore. None of it mattered. The monster always came. His face obscured in the shadows, partially hidden behind the cloak rack. Hot breath breathing over my face as soon as I closed my eyes. ~ Hannah Baston

There's different ways to be impacted by truth. One is to read the scriptures. Another is to read other works by other people who have read the scriptures, non fiction for example. Another is to do studies. Another is to go to a place of worship. Another thing is to sit and listen to someone who's speaking. There's all kinds of ways. Another way is to write. About the truth. Discover the struggle through your character. ~ Ted Dekker

I discovered something attractive about uncertainty. It was the knowledge that God was in control and that I was depending on him every moment. ~ Yilda B. Rivera

The most difficult speculation for a science fiction writer to undertake is to imagine correctly the *secondary* implications of a new factor. Many people correctly anticipated the coming of the horseless carriage, some were bold enough to predict that everyone would use them and the horse would disappear. But I know of no writer, fiction or non-fiction, who saw ahead of time the vast change in the courting and mating habits of Americans which would result primarily from the automobile."

Expanded Universe ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Regardless of whether one subscribes to the aims of the four movements whose stories we have told, there is much to appreciate about them as movements. They have overcome schisms; disbandment; leadership scandals; and/or the deaths of their founders. They have developed a highly innovative strategy - bypassing the state - to overcome the obstacles that their ideological strictness; ambitious agendas; and reluctance to compromise present. They have shown a strong entrepreneurial spirit in building effective social service agencies, medical facilities, schools, and businesses that often put the state's efforts to shame. While they are not the Christian militias, al-Qaeda cells, or Jewish extremist groups whose terrorism has attracted much attention, the Muslim Brotherhood, Shas, Comunione e Liberazione, and the Salvation Army, with their strategy of rebuilding society, one institution at a time, may well prove more successful in sacralizing their societies than movements that use violence. ~ Robert V. Robinson

Fiction is entertaining. Nonfiction is epic. ~ A.D. Posey

Not responding is a response - we are equally responsible for what we don't do. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

I'm not writing non-fiction. I don't feel anything about me as a kid was unique. Except that I had more interest in being alone and using my imagination. ~ John Irving

The difference between an achiever and a loser is,
An achiever never gives up, never settles and lastly never forgets. ~ Akash Lakhotia

Loose lips sink ships. ~ Erwin Rommel

Fiction and non-fiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons I do not fully understand, fiction dances out of me. Non-fiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning. ~ Arundhati Roy

Death is like a broken jar that you re trying to fix over and over again but it s not doable at all because the people who pass away can t come back, but they taught us love, admiration and joy that will last forever in our hearts. ~ Ikrame Selkani

I did not realize at the time, as I have discovered since, that anyone who attempts any thing original in this world must expect a bit of ridicule. Clarence Birdseye ~ Mark Kurlansky

Research on the human brain has shown it is predisposed to think in the terms of a story.36 This predisposition is continuously reinforced and strengthened throughout the life of your brain. Imaging studies have shown only a small, quarter-sized region of your brain lights up when someone tells you a series of facts. However, when someone tells you a story laced with those facts, or those facts in action, your entire brain lights up. Not only can you program your mind with a story - you can program someone else's mind. ~ Isaiah Hankel

A 21st century poet is a woman who can speak her mind and stand upright like a mountain with her convictions, but can adapt like water in an ever changing season without losing her genuine elements. ~ Roseville Nidea

River smiled sweetly at his tormentors and told them, "If you want to kick my ass, go ahead. Just explain to me why you're doing it."
After a confused pause, one of the skinheads said, "Ah, you wouldn't be worth it."
"We're all worth it, man," River said with a beatific smile. "We're all worth millions of planets and stars and galaxies and universes. ~ Gavin Edwards

Great charismatic leaders don't just say what voters want to hear; they say what voters want to say. ~ C.L. Gammon

What alternative is there to the media's "Us" versus "Them"? The danger is that if it is used to prop up this "righteous" position of "ours" all we will see from now on are ever more exacting and minute analyses of the "dirty" distortions in "their" thinking. Without some flexibility in our definitions we'll remain forever stuck with the same old knee-jerk reactions, or worse, slide into complete apathy. ~ Haruki Murakami

Reading non-fiction without writing notes is like chewing without swallowing. You will get the taste of it but digest nothing ~ Ray Hartley

the influence of organised crime reaches into the economy, our politics and everyday life- dongri to dubai ~ S. Hussain Zaidi

If you have ever felt slightly nauseous walking through an aged care facility, puckered your face against a smell, observed a grown woman clutching a dolly with desperation, felt a flood of melancholy as death fills your view – then you are in a perfect position to be a supportive psychotherapist for those whose lives are peppered with this everyday. ~ Felicity Chapman

Heaven is freakin' not ready for me! - seven-time cancer survivor Dionne Warner in Never Leave Your Wingman ~ Deana J. Driver

Visit any bookshop in Europe, and the shelves are filled with English novels and non-fiction books in translation - while British bookshops stock mainly English and American works. ~ Kate Williams

The soul wants what it wants and the heart just has to live with it. ~ Angel M.B. Chadwick

To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated. ~ James P. Carse

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

Any woman who wishes to be an intellectual, to write non-fiction, to deal with theory, faces a lot of discrimination coming her way and perhaps even self-doubt because there aren't that many who've gone before you. And I think that the most powerful tool we can have is to be clear about our intent. To know what it is we want to do rather than going into institutions thinking that the institution is going to frame for us. ~ Bell Hooks

I have been in recent years the author of a bestiary and director of some atlas projects; I've written criticism, editorials, reports from a few front lines, letters, a great many political essays ... , more personal stuff, essays for artists' books, and more ... Nonfiction is the whole realm from investigative journalism to prose poems, from manifestos to love letters, from dictionaries to packing lists. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Ambivalence and contradiction energize nearly every figure Michaelangelo carved, from the adolescent Madonna of the Stairs onward...But the four allegories atop the sarcophagi raise them to a symphonic crescendo. Each is a battleground of conflicting emotions and motives, in which will and paralysis battle for supremacy. ~ Eric Scigliano

Sitting down with a great book means that when you stand up, you will be a completely different person from who you were when you sat down. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I have long admired the visceral storytelling and moral complexity of John Vaillant's brilliant non-fiction about humankind's tragically ambivalent relationship with the natural world. Now he brings his abundant literary gifts to a debut novel set in a very real borderland in which human beings are themselves treated like animals. The Jaguar's Children is a beautifully rendered lament for an imperiled culture and the brave lives that would preserve it. You should read it. ~ John Burnham Schwartz

I'm never going to give in. I'm never going to give up, and I will fight back with every breath I have.
- Dionne Warner, seven-time cancer survivor and subject of Never Leave Your Wingman ~ Deana J. Driver

In terms of size, mammals are an anomaly, as the vast majority of the world's existing species are snail-sized or smaller. It's almost as if, regardless of your kingdom, the smaller your size & the earlier your place on the tree of life, the more critical is your niche on Earth: snails & worms create soil, & blue-green algae create oxygen; mammals seem comparatively dispensable, the result of the random path of evolution over a luxurious amount of time. ~ Elisabeth Tova Bailey

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

I read very widely, both non-fiction and fiction, so I don't think there's a single writer who influences me. ~ Peter Benchley

Never try to outgrow the people who were helping you walk,
when you could not even walk. ~ Akash Lakhotia

I thought I would write non-fiction. I thought I would enter the New York literary scene as copy editor, work my way up, and then write my own books. ~ Michael Gruber

There is no past and future for those who exist in the now. Live in the moment, today is the only reality. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Remember, the most common thing about common sense is how uncommon it is. ~ Jason Jennings

Women are understood to have an advantage when it comes to embodiment as by their very nature they are considered to be closer to their bodies, more available to them. So here we have a turning of the tides: rather than the attunement to the body being an obstacle and a curse, it now becomes a spiritual advantage and a way of advancement. ~ Meghan Don

Writing fiction is not a profession that leaves one well-disposed toward reading fiction. One starts out loving books and stories, and then one becomes jaded and increasingly hard to please. I read less and less fiction these days, finding the buzz and the joy I used to get from fiction in ever stranger works of non-fiction, or poetry. ~ Neil Gaiman

Jessica DuLong's elegantly written "My River Chronicles" brings the past of the Hudson River into the vivid present, and carries forward the craft of literary non-fiction with grace and energy. ~ Gay Talese

I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work. ~ Alain De Botton

Life is too short to be mad for too long. ~ Judith L. Harper

That's the difficulty in these times: ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us, only to meet the horrible truth and be shattered.
It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet, I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come out right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again. ~ Anne Frank

Jesmyn Ward returns to the world of her first two books, but here in the mode of non-fiction. A clear-eyed witness to the harrowing stories of 'men we reaped,' she quickens the dead and brings them, vividly alive again. An eloquent, grief-steeped account. ~ Nicholas Delbanco

It is not lack of ability, but lack of motivation, lack of focus, and lack of self-confidence that prevents most aspiring authors from finishing what they started. ~ Gudjon Bergmann

The most difficult part of writing a book is not devising a plot which will captivate the reader. It's not developing characters the reader will have strong feelings for or against. It is not finding a setting which will take the reader to a place he or she as never been. It is not the research, whether in fiction or non-fiction. The most difficult task facing a writer is to find the voice in which to tell the story. ~ Randy Pausch

It would have been very easy to drift into writing a non-fiction book so by taking it away from Nottingham I forced myself to imagine much more of it. ~ Jon McGregor

History will be kind to me for I have written it. Winston Churchill ~ Ron Mayes

I do teach fiction and non-fiction, and usually I'm interested in works that confuse genre, but I'm very new to teaching creative writing, I don't have an MFA, or a PhD, I tend to approach it just through my own practice. ~ Kate Zambreno

They inhabited a lost world of splendour and brutality, a world dominated by religious change, in which there were few saints. ~ Alison Weir

Hope is putting Faith "on the line" and expecting results!
(from Mission Possible - Spiritual Covering) ~ Deborah L. McCarragher

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

Before Truman Capote, journalism and non-fiction weren't taken very seriously. ~ Gerald Clarke

It was a time of beautiful brutal illusions. ~ Mick Karabegovic

His theory was that non-fiction could be as artful as fiction. ~ Gerald Clarke

In non-fiction, I found John Gardner's two writing books to be tremendously helpful. ~ Ann Leckie

We had a few non-fiction books at home, but my dad was of the opinion that fiction was a complete and utter waste of time because it wasn't real - so what was the point of reading it? ~ Malorie Blackman

This principle is taught in Scripture: "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). In other words, we learn to be loving because we are loved. Grace must come from the outside for us to be able to develop it inside. The opposite side of this truth is that we can't love when we aren't loved. And, taking the thinking further, we can't value or treasure our souls when they haven't been valued or treasured. ~ Henry Cloud

I do read a lot, and I think in recent years the ratio between the amount of non-fiction and fiction has tipped quite considerably. I did read fiction as a teenager as well, mostly because I was forced to read fiction, of course, to go through high school. ~ Daniel Tammet

Cruelty links all three primitives [pleasure, pain, and desire]: Spinoza defines it as the desire to inflict pain on someone we love or pity. Financial speaking, cruelty is analogous to a convertible bond whose debt and equity depend on three economic underliers: the stock price, the level of interest rates, and the credit worthiness of the company's debt. ~ Emanuel Derman

Don't make a big distinction between fiction and non-fiction. These are arbitrary distinctions ... ~ Farley Mowat

The Positive Paradigm is:

. . . a new, inclusive reality map, one people worldwide can easily comprehend and agree upon. It is equally compatible with scriptures and science, bridging the gap between them. It fulfills Einstein's intuited search for the Unified Field Theory, picturing how all parts of creation are related, interwoven and interdependent.

Working with the Positive Paradigm empowers the "substantially new manner of thinking," which, Einstein said, is necessary "if mankind is to survive."
For thousands of years, this genesis formula, the very heart of the creative process, was hidden as the secret treasure of initiates. Its knowledge was transmitted exclusively to qualified students in the inner circles of monastic schools. When Einstein intuited the theory of relativity and made it available to the general public, its long-foreseen abuse materialized. To Einstein's horror, it was misused to explode atomic bombs.

This context justifies making the positive application of Einstein's inspired vision equally public now. For in its traditional context, this three-part formula is an essential piece of the knowledge puzzle. It has the powerful potential to offset earlier abuse with opposite and equally unifying results. A timely shift to the Positive Paradigm could tip the scales of history in favor of human survival.
p. 11. ~ Patricia E. West

I'm very strict in my belief that non-fiction should be truthful, and fiction is for invented narratives. ~ Darin Strauss

I read the Bible steadily ... Even the long, monotonous lists. Even the really weird stuff, most of it so unbelievable as to only be true. I have to say I found it the most compelling piece of creative non-fiction I had ever read. If I sat around for thousands of years, I could never come up with what it proposes, let alone with how intricately Genesis unfolds toward Revelation. ~ Carolyn Weber

I think poetry is the best thing I do. It's certainly the purest. I seem to switch gears without too much trouble. Non-fiction is in many ways the easiest to write. ~ Erica Jong

Journalists in newspapers and in many magazines are not permitted to be subjective and tell their readers what they think. Journalists have got to follow a very strict formulaic line, and here we come, these non-fiction writers, these former journalists who are using all the techniques that journalists are pretty much not allowed to use. ~ Lee Gutkind

We all know the secret of dieting ... it's the application that's challenging.
p 7 ~ Gretchen Rubin

He looks at houses, chateaus, forests, and thinks about the countless generations who used to see those things and who are gone now; and he understands that everything he is seeing is oblivion; pure oblivion, the oblivion whose absolute state will soon be achieved, the moment he himself is gone. And again I think about the obvious idea (that astoundingly obvious idea) that everything that exists (nation, thought, music) can also not exist. ~ Milan Kundera

I have been tossing around the idea of writing some non-fiction. Maybe a collection of short stories about my experience being a mom and how not to be perfect. ~ Melissa Peterman

The world does not consist of subjects and objects, the "subject" and the "object" are metaphysical abstractions of the single and indivisible Wholeness. Man's finite knowledge separates the Whole into parts and studies fragmentarily the beings. The Wholeness is manifested in multiple forms and each form encapsulates the Wholeness ~ Alexis Karpouzos

My mother picked me up in her arms, touching my checks comforting my distress. I stared into her eyes and held her hair in my small hands, for the first time realizing what a moment in time meant. I touched her cheek and then looked away, knowing this was the truth to life, and there was nothing I could do about it. The truth that her death would one day occur made me realize that I never wanted her to leave my side. It was something I could not control, something no one could ever stop no matter how strong they were. ~ Joseph McGinnis

Non-fiction about personal subjects is going to attract more user comments than a foreign correspondent writing from Syria - unfortunately. ~ Meghan Daum

Imagine going to work every day to do only and exactly what you love!! All the work gets done because of the abundant diversity of your team. Different skills, interests and talents are woven together into a whole that is much greater than the sum of the parts! ~ Denise Moreland

I tend to read non-fiction. ~ Gary Oldman

In, 1950, at the age, 19 I dropped out of St. George William College in Montreal, as it then was, and sailed for England on the Franconia. Foolishly, no arrogantly, believing I could put Canada and its picayune problems behind me, never dreaming it would become the raw material of most of my fiction and non-fiction. Or that I would care so deeply about its surviving intact. ~ Mordecai Richler