Quotes by Geoff Dyer

About Geoff Dyer:

Geoff Dyer is an English writer. He is the author of four novels and seven books of non-fiction, which have won a number of literary awards and been translated into 24 languages. He has been described as "one of our greatest living critics, not of the arts but of life itself, and one of our most original writers" (by Kathryn Schulz in New York Magazine).
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I always like to be in the presence of people who are good at and love their jobs, Irrespective of their jobs.

Geoff Dyer

He was the subject of a little respectful ribbing. But he was, of course, the captain, which meant he had to do lots of the ribbing himself.

Geoff Dyer

If you help them (the crew) create good memories, they'll forget all the bad stuff

Geoff Dyer

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.

Geoff Dyer

There was something very American about this ability to dwell constantly in the realm of the improvable superlative.

Geoff Dyer

People say it's not what happens in your life that matters, it's what you think happened. But this qualification, obviously, did not go far enough. It was quite possible that the central event of your life could be something that didn't happen, or so...

Geoff Dyer

I am always on the edge of what I am doing. I do everything badly, sloppily, to get it over with so that I can get on to the next thing that I will do badly and sloppily so that I can then do nothing - which I do anxiously, distractedly, wondering al...

Geoff Dyer

When I'm working I'm wishing I was doing nothing and when I'm doing nothing I'm wondering if I should be working. I hurry through what I've got to do and then, when I've got nothing to do, I keep glancing at the clock, wishing it was time to go out. ...

Geoff Dyer

The paradox is that some of the most artistically valuable contemporary photographs are content with being photographs, are not under the same compulsion to pass themselves off - or pimp themselves out - as art. The simple truth is that the best expo...

Geoff Dyer

In the cramped confines of the toilet I had trouble getting out of my wet trousers, which clung to my legs like a drowning man. The new ones were quite complicated too in that they had more legs than a spider; either that or they didn't have enough l...

Geoff Dyer

We'd never seen anything as green as these rice paddies. It was not just the paddies themselves: the surrounding vegetation - foliage so dense the trees lost track of whose leaves were whose - was a rainbow coalition of one colour: green. There was a...

Geoff Dyer

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 t...

Geoff Dyer

Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire.

Geoff Dyer

The perfect life, the perfect lie, I realised after Christmas, is one which prevents you from doing that which you would ideally have done (painted, say, or written unpublishable poetry) but which, in fact, you have no wish to do.

Geoff Dyer

My greatest urge in life is to do nothing. It's not even an absence of motivation, a lack, for I do have a strong urge: to do nothing. To down tools, to stop. Except I know that if I do that I will fall into despair, and I know that it is worth doing...

Geoff Dyer

Author Bio

  • NameGeoff Dyer
  • DescriptionEnglish writer
  • BornJune 5, 1958
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionWriter
  • AwardsSomerset Maugham Award; National Book Critics Circle Award; Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize