Bits Quote by Emily Susan Rapp

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

— Barbara Kingsolver

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

— Colson Whitehead

Narrative nonfiction was not my forte. I always wanted to let my imagination run free, and the facts sometimes got in the way. At…

— Douglas Florian

I used to be a freelance journalist, so I had to write fast, but I always found writing nonfiction constraining. I like the freedom…

— Michelle Gagnon

For a while I just couldn't imagine that there was a place for me in nonfiction. I looked around at what we were calling…

— John D'Agata

Writing a nonfiction story is like cracking a safe. It seems impossible at the beginning, but once you're in, you're in.

— Rich Cohen

I suppose writing nonfiction did prepare me for writing fiction. Whenever you write anything, you're honing your skills for writing anything else.

— Elizabeth Berg

At least for me, it takes more knowledge to write fiction than nonfiction. At least about someplace that I begin with a lot of…

— William T. Vollmann

Fiction is harder for me than nonfiction - more gratifying, as a result, when it succeeds.

— Rick Bass

Nonfiction speaks to the head. Fiction speaks to the heart. Poetry speaks to the soul. It's the essence of beauty. The essence of pain.…

— Ellen Hopkins

The pleasure of nonfiction is that it takes all of that sort of artistic and observational skill, but then there's a more intellectual layer…

— Ted Genoways

Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes…

— Joan Didion