David Herbert Donald Quotes

Fiction isn't memoir and memoir isn't fiction.

A book is either autobiography or a novel.

I wrote my first short story in third grade.

Basically, I think of fiction and non-fiction as different ways of engaging with the world. You reach a point where you feel you have said all you possibly can, in reportage or a review essay or a reflection on history, which 'From the Ruins of Empire' was.

There are two types of stories: public and private.

To me there's no difference between a book of stories and a novel - they're just slightly different shapes.

I've never had any interest at all in being a journalist or writing some sort of historically accurate autobiography.

A memoir is always the most authentic telling of a situation, but a novel gets to different places.

I never really considered writing something that was nonfiction.

Biography is a very definite region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the east by obituary, and on the west by tedium

Those who have been writing literature have not been writing life.

I have a whole section of a filing cabinet in my office full of ideas. Some are ideas for books or articles I want to write. One is a romantic comedy; one's about my dad's life. I've also got ideas for books on moral relativism as well as democracy and human nature. There's also a really cool concept for a spy novel.

NOVEL, n. A short story padded.

Yes, I have two books that are about me: one of them I wrote, and the other one was written about me. One of my books, which is called 'Spying on Miss Muller,' is really about me even though it's a novel. My autobiography is called 'Once Upon a Time.'

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.

I came to the conclusion that I am not a fiction writer.

I have a children's book already out and my autobiography.

When it comes to memoir, we want to catch the author in a lie. When we read fiction, we want to catch the author telling the truth.

A fictionalised memoir of my father would be a failure as a novel.

I have some great stories and I will get around to writing a book.

I had been working on this series called 'Everything Dies,' and it was basically me doing non-fiction essays, responding to religion and stuff like that, and I really got into this ideas of telling factual stories via comics.

Newt Gingrich wrote a novel, and he's a short story. Bill Clinton wrote a biography, and he's a novel.

I like short stories.

Most of the things in 'The Things They Carried' didn't happen to me. Ninety-five percent of it's invented. It's not what occurred.

A memoir is my version of events. My perspective. I choose what to tell and what to omit. I choose the adjectives to describe a situation, and in that sense, I'm creating a form of fiction.