Quote

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

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Geoff Dyer
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: June 5
Author
Journalist
Music Journalist
Writer
Cheltenham Spa
Book
Choice
Nothing
Choose
Feel
Books
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Choices
Writing
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Something
Idea
Always
Two
Time
Ideas
Latter

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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.
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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.
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One of the reasons so many nonfiction books are so boring is because what they've done, very diligently, is fulfill the terms of their proposals. They've written up their proposal, long-form, and often what this does is then set up a sort of serial deal, where the whole book can essentially be reduced back to the size of the original proposal!
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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.
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I’m so revolted by writers taking themselves seriously that, as a kind of protest, I’ve deprioritized the role of writing in my life. I do it when I’ve not got anything better to do – and even then I often do nothing instead.
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I've never really liked L.A., because of its sprawl.
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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.
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I would agree on the aging thing. Because, at a certain point, once you start noticing it, it is your subject. And I know young that people, when they get to 30, say, Oh, I'm so old. But actually, around 50, you do become conscious of it.
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Each of my book arrives at a form and a style that is appropriate to the subject.
Geoff Dyer
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I don't like my books being defined by their about-ness. So now the subtitle has just become a kind of strap-line on the cover.
Geoff Dyer
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These days any self-respecting exhibition of nude photos has to have pornographically explicit images to prove that they are works of art.
Geoff Dyer
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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.
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I always hope to come up with a style of writing that's appropriate to the material and I felt like this was. And then there's plenty of - I don't know if it's the right word but - lampooning, but it's always at my expense.
Geoff Dyer
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One's happiness is very largely a question of state of mind rather than the world you are looking at.
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If Donald Trump thinks that just by being unpredictable that somehow he can have an impact, but not necessarily commit himself to certain things, that's not the way it is going to be read in foreign capitals. Foreign governments are going to take these things very literally and very directly.
Geoff Dyer
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Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire.
Geoff Dyer
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I really like the George Clooney of Solaris also filmed by Andrei Tarkovsky, before Steven Soderbergh: that's very obviously sci-fi, and it seems to me a great film. But whatever pigeon-hole you put Stalker into you would both be increasing the risk of disappointing people and diminishing the film.
Geoff Dyer