Geoff Dyer quotes

Geoff Dyer is a British author, essayist, and critic, acclaimed for his stylistically inventive works across fiction and non-fiction. His books frequently explore themes of art, travel, music, and the act of writing itself. He is celebrated for blending genres and bringing a unique voice to contemporary literature. Here are 20 of his quotes:

When you are lonely, writing can keep you company. It is also a form of self-compensation, a way of making up for things-as opposed to making things up-that did not quite happen. (Geoff Dyer)
Life is bearable even when it's unbearable: that is what's so terrible, that is the unbearable thing about it. View quote
Geoff Dyer
To be interested in something is to be involved in what is essentially a stressful relationship with that thing, to suffer anxiety on its behalf. View quote
Geoff Dyer
Have regrets. They are fuel. On the page they flare into desire. View quote
Geoff Dyer
They made two thousand years ago seem like yesterday, and yesterday look like today, just as today would, in time, look like tomorrow. View quote
Geoff Dyer
I felt I could no longer take the roller-coaster of emotions of travel, its surges of exaltation, its troughs of despondency, it's large stretches of boredom and inconvenience. View quote
Geoff Dyer
I was constantly surprised by how much people didn't know. That's one of the things about traveling, one of the things you learn: many people in the world, even educated ones, don't know much, and it doesn't actually matter at all. View quote
Geoff Dyer
Virility of one kind or another is so important if you are to feel like a man. You have to be able to perform stunts. You have to be able to show off in front of your woman, do things she urges you not to do because they look dangerous. View quote
Geoff Dyer
All we can do is keep applying the creosote, propping ourselves up with health and success, trying to keep the rain and the damp and the rot at bay for a little longer, trying to postpone the moment of complete collapse of abandonment for the same reason that one waits as long as possible for the alcoholic drink of the day: because the longer you leave it, the better it will feel. View quote
Geoff Dyer
Once you turn forty...the whole world is water off a duck's back. Once you turn forty you realize that life is there to be wasted. View quote
Geoff Dyer
The idea is to generate paperwork. The word could hardly be more apt. Paper is work. Paper is the big employer. Someone fills out a form (in triplicate), someone files one copy, the other copy goes somewhere else to be filed by someone else, the third is retained by the customer for his records. The most insignificant transaction must be scrupulously recorded and logged, filed and stored, even, on occasion, retrieved. On a trip to Libya, p. 183. (Geoff Dyer)
The best way to learn was by looking, to become articulate in the language of sight. The eye could learn to look after itself. View quote
Geoff Dyer
The more you covet something, the more certain it is that you'll lose it, and the more devastating the loss will be when it happens-which it will. View quote
Geoff Dyer
I should have been happy-I was being paid to be here-but happiness does not respond to that kind of imperative; it is no good telling yourself you should be happy. View quote
Geoff Dyer
I had to be on my own, just so that I would not feel as alone. View quote
Geoff Dyer
I think I do have a sort of terrible propensity for boredom and for being bored, even though I am absolutely of the opinion that one shouldn't be bored and that there is no excuse for it and that it is a personal failing. View quote
Geoff Dyer
Dave was committed to making it a truly memorable weekend in the sense that he would remember nothing whatsoever about it. View quote
Geoff Dyer
Ruins-antique ruins at least-are what is left when history has moved on. View quote
Geoff Dyer
This book is a ripped, by no mean reliable map of some of the landscapes that make up a particular phase of my life. It's about places where things happened or didn't happen, places where I stayed and things that have stayed with me, places I'd wanted to see or places I passed through or just ended up. View quote
Geoff Dyer
This book is a ripped, by no mean reliable map of some of the landscapes that make up a particular phase of my life. It's about places where things happened or didn't happen, places where I stayed and things that have stayed with me, places I'd wanted to see or places I passed through or just ended up. In a way they're all the same place-the same landscape-because the person these things happened to was the same person who in turn is the sum of all things that happened or didn't happen in these and other places. Everything in this book really happened, but some of the things that happened only happened in my head; by that same token, all the things that didn't happen didn't happen there too. View quote
Geoff Dyer