Geoff Dyer

I'm never happier when writing than when I see gags taking shape - ideally, gags at my own expense. What I like is the shuttling back and forth, serious into comedy and vice-versa, ideally, both in the same sentence, or even simultaneously. The best jokes are always ideas in miniature. ”

I've never been much drawn towards satire of any kind. ”

What I don't like is constructing a book that fits in with any kind of generic template, whether it's fiction or nonfiction. ”

We have in our heads a pretty well-defined narrative of the First World War, and there are certain events that are obviously key. ”

First, unreliability is not the sole preserve of fictional narrators. Second, the pleasure of patting oneself on the back for seizing on instances of unreliability and ignorance is, as the late Frank Kermode may or may not have pointed out, considerable. ”

Physical violence is always a bore in films today. We don't see how much it hurts. We don't learn the true consequences of it. ”

The ritual of film-going in some sense replaced that of churchgoing, because you share something communal, sometimes mystical. ”

Contrary to popular belief, Oxford has the highest concentration of dull-witted, stupid, narrow-minded people anywhere in the British Isles. ”

I've always had this belief that you want to write about universal truths. ”

I think that if you are a resolute, unswerving atheist, you have that sense that you are conscious of the God-shaped hole that has been left in the wake of any religious belief, and in a way, one is much more drawn to articulate why it is that certain places, or certain experiences, have a kind of power. ”