I teach a non-fiction writing class at New York University, and one of my great pleasures is deciding on the syllabus.
Before Truman Capote, journalism and non-fiction weren't taken very seriously.
Non-fiction books have helped me enormously with lots of my books.
Where radio is different than fiction is that even mediocre fiction needs purpose, a driving question.
There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there's only narrative.
I could talk more directly in a nonfiction voice than I could in fiction.
I'm a big fan of historical fiction stuff. Historical battles - 'Gladiators,' 'The Patriot.'
...the pleasures of literary fiction are the pleasures of orientation; the pleasures of literature are the pleasures of bewilderment.
To say that science is the measure of all true knowledge is not a scientific truth but a philosophic claim about science. It's scientism posing as science.
There is no such thing as a special category of science called applied science; there is science and its applications, which are related to one another as the fruit is related to the tree that has borne it.
One of the great commandments of science is, 'Mistrust arguments from authority'. (Scientists, being primates, and thus given to dominance hierarchies, of course do not always follow this commandment.)
Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being.
While science can be many things, above all it is a way for our mistake-making, illusion-prone, storytelling brains to compare different methods for describing nature.
Most songwriters who have been lucky enough to have their song on the radio or be heard widely don't know anything about science. The best songs have a strong dose of metaphor. Most songs about science don't have that. Like 'She Blinded Me With Scien...
Economists should be modest and be aware that they are part of the broader social science community. We need to be pragmatic about the methods we use. When we need to do history, we should do history. When we need to study political science, we shoul...
The more science I studied, the more I saw that physics becomes metaphysics and numbers become imaginary numbers. The farther you go into science, the mushier the ground gets. You start to say, 'Oh, there is an order and a spiritual aspect to science...
Look, science is hard, it has a reputation of being hard, and the facts are, it is hard, and that's the result of 400 years of science, right? I mean, in the 18th century, in the 18th century you could become an expert on any field of science in an a...
Years ago, when I was about to go on a book tour for , my editor at the time and I sat down to figure out what to call what I was writing for the interviews that were to come. Terri came up with the term mythic fiction and I think that sums it up per...
Everything is drawn inexorably toward the future.
We humans are confined to our brane.
There is one power in the Universe and we can all use it.
