The competitions between fiction and nonfiction, short and long, electronic and paper, are not battles in which there can be only one victor. After all, we exist in a world where more kinds of writing than ever are greeted with interest and enthusiasm.

Celeste Ng

There is always a certain leap of faith that editors have made with their nonfiction writers. If the trust is broken, things can get very embarrassing for the writers and the publisher.

A. Scott Berg

Trust Faith Writers

Medicine, you see, is my first love; whether I write fiction or nonfiction, and even when it has nothing to do with medicine, it's still about medicine. After all, what is medicine but life plus? So I write about life.

Abraham Verghese

Love Life You

I read a lot of science fiction, but I also mixed it up with a lot of other genres: crime, literary fiction, as well as nonfiction. Author-wise, I'm a fan of Stephen King, Lauren Beukes, Robert McCammon, Raymond Chandler, Greg Rucka, Ed Brubaker and Gail Simone, among many others.

Adam Christopher

Science Wit Wise

In Bosnian, there's no distinction in literature between fiction and nonfiction; there's no word describing that.

Aleksandar Hemon

Word Tin T

I read a little bit of nonfiction and a lot of poetry. I think of poetry as my shot of whiskey when I don't have time to savor a whole bottle of wine.

Alice McDermott

Time Poetry Wine

Nonfiction is both easier and harder to write than fiction. It's easier because the facts are already laid out before you, and there is already a narrative arc. What makes it harder is that you are not free to use your imagination and creativity to fill in any missing gaps within the story.

Amy Bloom

Imagination Your You

I'm open to reading almost anything - fiction, nonfiction - as long as I know from the first sentence or two that this is a voice I want to listen to for a good long while. It has much to do with imagery and language, a particular perspective, the assured knowledge of the particular universe the writer has created.

Amy Tan

Knowledge Good Art

But I don't read a lot of fiction. I prefer the nonfiction stuff.

Andy Richter

T Stuff Refer

Great brands and great businesses have to be great storytellers, too. We have to tell stories - emotive, compelling stories - and even more so because we're nonfiction.

Angela Ahrendts

Great Business Use

I finish two books a week, mostly nonfiction.

Ann-Marie Campbell

Week Two T

I've written six novels and four pieces of nonfiction, so I don't really have a genre these days.

Anne Lamott

Written Ten T

I read the same amount of nonfiction and fiction.

Anne Lamott

UN T Same

It makes more sense to write one big book - a novel or nonfiction narrative - than to write many stories or essays. Into a long, ambitious project you can fit or pour all you possess and learn.

Annie Dillard

You Write Us

I read all of the nonfiction that I could find on Chechnya, and all the while, I was searching for a novel that was set there. I couldn't find a single novel written in English that was set in the period of the two most recent Chechen wars.

Anthony Marra

War Ya Written

Maybe I'll work for a label someday, write some fiction, nonfiction. Someday I'd like to go back to school and get my teaching degree. I want to be a grandpa. I want to have more kids.

Art Alexakis

Work Write Want

I am consumed, or I have been consumed, with these issues of motherhood and the way we act out societal expectations and roles. So both my nonfiction and my fiction have been pretty much exclusively about that.

Ayelet Waldman

Wit Way Us

Nonfiction requires enormous discipline. You construct the terms of your story, and then you stick to them.

Barbara Kingsolver

Your You Us

In terms of a narrative nonfiction book, when you're describing scenes that you have multiple sources for, and that you have differing sources for, and you decide to choose a path that puts all that information together, well yeah, there's definitely going to be a little bit of the author in that. But there's nothing wrong with that.

Ben Mezrich

You Yeah Wrong

I write nonfiction in this thriller-esque style. I have all the facts; I research it. I have thousands of pages of court documents... I try to get inside my stories.

Ben Mezrich

Men Age Write

I hardly read fiction; I mostly read nonfiction. I like to examine material things.

Bennett Miller

Things Thing Thin

I find that my reading, particularly nonfiction, can inspire a poem as well as anything else.

Billy Collins

I often say flippantly that the short story is... shorter; you can be done with it more easily. It's much less of a commitment of time and energy than a big project like a novel or long nonfiction book.

Bobbie Ann Mason

I like to get paid for doing basic research, so it's pleasant to write some nonfiction about it.

Bruce Sterling

There's always a slight tension when you sell a book to Hollywood, especially a nonfiction book. The author wants his story told intact; the nonfiction author wants it told accurately.

Bryan Burrough

If uncovering the truth is the greatest challenge of nonfiction writing, it is also the greatest reward.

Candice Millard

When I'm working on a novel of my own, I try to read mostly nonfiction, although sometimes I break down and peek at something else.

Carl Hiaasen

The competitions between fiction and nonfiction, short and long, electronic and paper, are not battles in which there can be only one victor. After all, we exist in a world where more kinds of writing than ever are greeted with interest and enthusiasm.

Celeste Ng

Short fiction and the novel, nonfiction and fiction, electronic texts and books - these are not opposites. One need not destroy the other to survive.

Celeste Ng

I think one of the reasons that I like fiction versus nonfiction is that I myself can kind of disappear from the story.

Celeste Ng

Fiction and nonfiction, for me, involve very different processes.

Chad Harbach

In this time of the Internet and nonfiction, to be on an actual bookshelf in an actual bookstore is exciting in itself.

Chris Abani

People seem to read so much more nonfiction than fiction, and so it always gives me great pleasure to introduce a friend or family member to a novel I believe they'll cherish but might not otherwise have thought to pick up and read.

Chris Bohjalian

I find now I'm reading a lot more nonfiction, simply because every time I read fiction, I think I can write it better. But every time I read nonfiction, I learn things.

Chris Claremont

You can tell a more over-the-top incredible story if you use a nonfiction form.

Chuck Palahniuk

For me, choosing between fiction and nonfiction is really only about picking the right tool for the job.

Colson Whitehead

I knew that a zombie book would not particularly appeal to some of my previous readers, but it was artistically compelling, and being able to do a short nonfiction book about poker was really fun and great.

Colson Whitehead

Some people don't like my fiction, because they prefer the nonfiction. But moving around keeps the work fresh for me and, hopefully, for my one or two readers who follow me from book to book!

Colson Whitehead

I don't read that many novels, I'm more of a nonfiction fan.

Cory Monteith

In 1982, when I was almost 26 years old, I decided I wanted to write fiction. I'd majored in journalism in college, and I'd always assumed I would write nonfiction.

Cynthia Kadohata

I read nonfiction almost exclusively - both for research and also for pleasure. When I read fiction, it's almost always in the thriller genre, and it needs to rivet me in the opening few chapters.

Dan Brown

I wrote six nonfiction books before getting into narrative fiction with 'Robopocalypse,' including 'How to Survive a Robot Uprising.' My goal all along was to start writing fiction, and I guess one day I'd just had enough.

Daniel H. Wilson

Every time I get through the work on a book of nonfiction, I say I'll never do it again; it takes so much out of you.

Dave Eggers

I write both fiction and nonfiction. I begin my fiction with the main character. The story comes later.

David A. Adler

For my books of nonfiction I write about subjects I find fascinating. I've been a Yankees and a Lou Gehrig fan for decades, so I wrote 'Lou Gehrig: The Luckiest Man.' It's more the story of his great courage than of his baseball playing. Children face all sorts of challenges, and it's my hope that some will be inspired by the courage of Lou Gehrig.

David A. Adler

Because I read so much nonfiction for work, I enjoy fiction most, especially detective novels and mysteries that keep me awake at night.

David Grann

I tend not to read fiction - I'll read one novel a year during the summer - but I do read a lot of nonfiction.

David Lammy

I like nonfiction books about people with wretched lives.

David Sedaris

I began as a fiction writer - I had written three novels in my 20s and 30s. But as my work has gravitated towards literary nonfiction, or lyric essay or poetic essay, whatever you want to call it, I'm constantly beating my head against the wall 'cause I'm teaching a genre that's no longer that exciting to me and that I'm no longer practicing.

David Shields

I'm really interested in the new nonfiction. I think the hyper-digital culture has changed our brains in ways we cannot begin to fathom.

David Shields

In my twenties and early thirties, I wrote three novels, but beginning in my late thirties, I wearied of the mechanics of fiction writing, got interested in collage nonfiction, and have been writing literary collage ever since.

David Shields