Cheever constantly voiced doubts about his writing. Reading ‘The Naked and the Dead’ made him despair of his own ‘confined talents.’ Geoff Dyer Read Quote
There is a thematic continuity here within Bigelow’s work: ‘The Hurt Locker’ serves up a military equivalent of the thrill-trips that Lenny Nero was hustling in her earlier ‘Strange Days.’ Geoff Dyer Read Quote
Writers are not obliged to deal with current events, but it happens that the big story of our times – the al-Qaida attacks on New York and the Pentagon, and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – is being told in some of the greatest books of our time. Geoff Dyer Read Quote
Once you’ve got through immigration, one is always made to feel very welcome in America, once they’ve let you in. It’s a great place to be. Geoff Dyer Read Quote
Practically everyone I know now is from a middle- or upper-middle-class background, and I no longer have the huge chip on my shoulder that I carried around for so many years. I’m not sure it comes out much in the work, but coming from this kind of background is absolutely central to my identity, to my sense of who I am. Geoff Dyer Read Quote
Now, instead of loading up your jalopy and heading for California, you take a second, badly paid job; ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ has turned into ‘Nickel and Dimed.’ Geoff Dyer Read Quote
I was studying English, as you will, in the day, and five nights a week, I would be at the cinema. That continued throughout my 20s, which was also the 1980s – there was a lot of really good films coming out then. Geoff Dyer Read Quote
One of my great heroes, John Berger, he’s in his 80s now. One of the reasons that he’s remained young and all-around fantastic is his ongoing receptivity to new things. I think that’s important. Geoff Dyer Read Quote
Borrowing something from one art form and relocating it in another always has a whiff of pretension about it, like in books if, instead of ‘Chapter One,’ you have ‘First Movement.’ Geoff Dyer Read Quote
I like things that are funny and have a lot else in them besides that – ideas, for example. Geoff Dyer Read Quote
