Non Fiction Writing Quotes

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

Susan Orlean

#2. 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

#3. The one thing fiction and non-fiction writing have in common for me is that sense of trying to get the sentences to be minimal but at the same time be a little overfull - to encourage them to do a kind of poetic work.

George Saunders

#4. 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 Sladek

#5. The best way to tell people about climate change is through non-fiction. There's a vast literature of outstanding writing on the subject.

Ian McEwan

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

Meghan Daum

#7. Read everything. Read fiction and non-fiction, read hot best sellers and the classics you never got around to in college.

Jennifer Weiner

#8. Perhaps this is the purpose of all art, all writing, on the murders, fiction and non-fiction:
Simply to participate.

Alan Moore

#9. I used to hammer away at the idea of simplicity.
In both fiction and non-fiction, there's only one question and one answer. 'What happened?' the reader asks. 'This is what happened,' the writer responds. 'This ... and this ... and this, too.' Keep it simple. It's the only sure way home.

Stephen King

#10. I have to say that writing about my writing process is more daunting than writing non-fiction.

Sefi Atta

#11. Writing for children can be completely honest in non-cynical ways. In adult books you're required to be cynical. It embarrasses us to say positive things. You can have affection and hope in children's books, but that is out of fashion in adult fiction.

Lloyd Alexander

#12. 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

#13. Writing fiction is fun. Writing non-fiction is life-changing.

A.D. Posey

#14. Anyone who has no need of anybody but himself is either a beast or a God.
Aristotle

Bruce Wayne Sullivan

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

Ray Hartley

#16. What has bothered and angered radical Muslims is that I'm a non-Muslim writing anything at all about Islam. But this is fiction, and I don't think Islam is above criticism or fictionalization any more so than Judaism, Christianity, Mormonism or Hinduism is.

Brad Thor

#17. So much history, if you or I were to write it, could seem a fiction. These separations, these lines that tell us this is fiction or non-fiction, that this is history or this is a novel, are often useless.

Jamaica Kincaid

#18. 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

#19. One of the paradoxes of writing is that when you write non-fiction everyone tries to prove that it's wrong, and when you publish fiction, everyone tries to see the truth in it.

Scarlett Thomas

#20. In non-fiction, I found John Gardner's two writing books to be tremendously helpful.

Ann Leckie

#21. In the first 27 years of my life, I never had written a single non-technical word. I went to engineering college and went to business school. I never knew I could write fiction of any form.

Karan Bajaj

#22. When you're writing non-fiction, you go as far as you can go, and then ethically you have to stop. You can't go. You can't suppose. You can't imagine. And I think there's something in human nature that wants to finish the story.

Geraldine Brooks

#23. 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

#24. Writing is a psychological process. It is the process of taking what is in your mind and sharing it with others.

Gudjon Bergmann

#25. The best of fiction, as we know, of course, doesn't tell the truth; it tales the truth.

Criss Jami

#26. The writing talent of Edinburgh is textured - we have poets, novelists, non-fiction writers, dramatists and more.

Sara Sheridan

#27. Fiction is entertaining. Nonfiction is epic.

A.D. Posey

#28. 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

#29. I'd probably be a super wealthy guy if I had sat around writing songs and getting them placed like everyone else I know. But I write songs about people or after I meet them and they're somewhat biographical - they're fiction but also non-fiction.

Nile Rodgers

#30. I don't write non-fiction because I get bored. Some of my writing is autobiographical, but not the way readers imagine. I use my memory of settings, events and people. I weave history into my stories, but my narratives are made up.

Sefi Atta

#31. I cannot say how strongly I object to people using other people's writing as research. Research is non-fiction, especially for horror, fantasy, science fiction. Do not take your research from other people's fiction. Just don't.

Laurell K. Hamilton

#32. 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

#33. Writing is writing, and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and non-fiction. And even there, who can be sure?

Tanith Lee

#34. Non-fiction can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies.

V.S. Naipaul

#35. In high school, I was very active in extracurricular activities such as art, theatre, and choir. I also wrote for the school newspaper, but not regularly, because I never liked writing non-fiction very much.

Meg Cabot

#36. The people who are writing online and the people in my genre of creative non-fiction exert a great deal more freedom that journalists are allowed to exert in their day-to-day work.

Lee Gutkind

#37. 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

#38. I honestly believe that everything I know about the writing of non-fiction (or writing) could be engraved on the head of a pin with a garden hoe ...

M.F.K. Fisher

#39. Biographies are best when written chronologically. Boring people don't make for good biographies.

Deana J. Driver

#40. 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

#41. 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

#42. I like writing non-fiction - and when you pick a [non-fiction] subject, it saves you the hassle of coming up with a plot.

Richard Hell

#43. In writing non-fiction about people who are living, you are always walking a fine line, carrying a burden to be fair that, in my opinion, should always be there.

Jonathan Coleman

#44. 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