I am still moved by passages of Marx: the ‘Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right,’ for example, where, after the famous line about religion being ‘the opium of the people,’ he goes on to call it ‘the heart of a heartless world.’ – Geoff Dyer
I could never write a book where the point-of-view character was a short person, because I just can’t imagine what that’s like. – Geoff Dyer
I first got a sense of that idea of nodality – but I didn’t use the word back then – with ‘The Missing of the Somme’: that sense of a particular place in a landscape or on a map having some kind of tremendous power to draw us to itself… that made me conscious, and since then, really, it has been an abiding concern of mine. – Geoff Dyer
Once you’ve published a few books, you drag around this ball and chain of a back list. All the evidence of how few you’ve sold is there. I think a lot of writers my age have this strange experience of going from would-be to has-been. – Geoff Dyer
The business of taking a book and transforming into a script to make this thing called a film – it’s a mysterious process to me; sometimes it works. – Geoff Dyer
One of the things I’ve really come to realise is that the chances of arriving at a universal truth are increased if you remain absolutely faithful to the contingencies of your own experience and the vagaries of your own nature. – 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. – Geoff Dyer
I’m as strong and supple as a pane of thin glass. I’ve got too many ailments – left shoulder, left elbow and left wrist – in fact, the whole of the left arm. – Geoff Dyer
What I’ve really liked doing is combining what you might call art criticism or music criticism with something that is happening in real life. – Geoff Dyer
Have you ever stayed at the Four Seasons Hotel in Mumbai? I’d warmly recommend it. It’s super luxurious, and right next door, there’s a classic slum. So you can do a quick slum tour and get back to your sanctuary without any inconvenience but with some excellent snaps. – Geoff Dyer
My Tarkovsky idolatry was at its peak, but ‘Nostalghia’ really didn’t do anything for me. ‘The Sacrifice’ was similarly disappointing for me. Next thing we knew, he was dead. – Geoff Dyer
Sharing a room with one person is worse than sharing with six, and sharing with six is in some ways worse than sharing with sixty. – 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. – Geoff Dyer
For me, those little cinemas in Paris where I saw many art films for the first time meant that cinema became a kind of pilgrimage site. – Geoff Dyer
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
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. – Geoff Dyer
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. – Geoff Dyer
I’m incredibly competitive in all sports in a way that is so mystifying to my wife because she grew up playing the violin and piano. I’ve always been like that. – Geoff Dyer
If you just take me as a fiction writer, then you’re probably going to find me fairly limited. – Geoff Dyer
When I started writing, the deal was that publishers gave you a grand or two as an advance to buy some sweets, with the promise that they would make a big putsch with your fourth book when you’d built up a bit of a following. But by the time my fourth book came out, previously unpublished authors were the new big thing. – Geoff Dyer
There’s one profound difference between secular and religious pilgrimages. It’s inconceivable that a Muslim would feel a sense of anticlimax when reaching Mecca. But for a secular pilgrim, the potential for disappointment is always there. – Geoff Dyer
You read ‘Stalingrad’ by Antony Beevor because you’re interested in the Second World War or Russia or whatever. – Geoff Dyer
We still go to nonfiction for content. And if it’s well-written, that’s a bonus. But we don’t often talk about the nonfiction work of art. That’s what I’m very interested in. – Geoff Dyer
I remember being interviewed about my first novel, ‘The Colour of Memory.’ They kept using the expression ‘your first novel,’ and I said, ‘No, I object to that phrase, because this is it for me.’ – Geoff Dyer
I think I got into travelling because it was so not in my blood, so against my tendency to just stay put because my dad just hated going on holidays, because, as I’ve said in many essays, the thing that he hated more than anything else in life was spending money. And as soon as you leave your home, you’re spending money. – Geoff Dyer