Author: Geoff Dyer

Cites

• Roberto Calasso (1)
  • IN: Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi (2010) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: For every step, the footprint was already there
    FROM: The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, (1993), Book, Italy
• Allen Ginsberg (1)
  • IN: Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi (2010) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Huge walls & towers & rocks & balconies - a prospect along the bend of the river like Venice along Grand Canal or seen from Judecca - finally to Manikarnika burning ghat...
    FROM: Indian Journals, (1970), Book, US
• Joseph Brodsky (2)
  • IN: Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi (2010) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Alas, the movie wasn't much to speak of; besides, I never liked the novel much either.
    FROM: Watermark, (1992), Book, Russia
  • IN: The Missing of the Somme (2011) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Remember: the past won't fit into memory without something left over; it must have a future.
    FROM: San Pietro, (1977), Poem, Russia/US
• Henry James (1)
  • IN: Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi (2010) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: The deposed, the defeated, the disenchanted, the wounded, or even only the bored, have seemed to find there something that no other place could give.
    FROM: Italian Hours, (1909), Book, US
• Theodor Adorno (2)
  • IN: But Beautiful: A book about Jazz (1996) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Profucers of great art are no demigods but fallible human beings, often with neurotic and damaged personalitites.
    FROM: Aesthetic Theory, (1970), Book, Germany
  • IN: Paris Trance (2014) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Even the loveliest dream bears like a blemish its difference from reality, the awareness that what it grants is mere illusion. This is why precisely the loveliest dreams are as if blighted.
    FROM: Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, (1951), Book, Germany
• Ernst Bloch (1)
  • IN: But Beautiful: A book about Jazz (1996) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: We hear only ourselves
    FROM: Essays on the Philosophy of Music, (1974), Book, Germany
• Don Paterson (2)
  • IN: Working the Room (2010) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: ‘There are writers for whom no forms exist: too clever for novels, too sceptical for poetry, too verbose for the aphorism, all that is left to them is the essay – the least appropriate medium for the foiled.’
    FROM: The Book of Shadows, (2004), Book, UK
• Søren Kierkegaard (1)
  • IN: The Search (1993) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Fairy-tales and legends often tell of a knight who suddenly catches sight of a rare bird of which he then sets off in pursuit, since in the beginning it seemed quite close, but then it flies off again, until at last night falls. The knight is separated from his companions and lost in the wilderness in which he now finds himself.
    FROM: The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition of Edification and Awakening, (1849), Book, Denmark
• Fernando Pessoa (1)
  • IN: The Search (1993) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: The man who has criss-crossed every ocean has merely criss-crossed the monotony of his self. I have criss-crossed more seas than any man alive. I have seen more mountains than most on this earth. I have been through more cities than exist and over the mighty rivers of non-existent worlds which flowed, absolute, under my contemplative gaze . . . Did I leave? I could not swear to it. I found myself in other lands, in other ports, passing through towns which were not this one, even if neither this one nor that one were towns at all . . .
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, Portugal
• Alfred Stieglitz (1)
  • IN: The Ongoing Moment (2009) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: the only thing in which I have been actually thorough has been in being thoroughly unprepared.
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, US
• Martha Sandweiss (1)
  • IN: Another Day at Sea (2014) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: The capacity of photographs to evoke rather than tell, to suggest rather than explain, makes them alluring material for the historian or anthropologist or art historian who would pluck a single picture from a large collection and use it to narrate his or her own stories. But such stories may or may not have anything to do with the original narrative context of the photograph, the intent of its creator, or the ways in which it was used by its original audience.
    FROM: Print the Legend: Photography and the American West, (2002), Book, US
• Annie Dillard (2)
  • IN: White Sands (2016) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: The point of going somewhere like the Napo River in Ecuador is not to see the most spectacular anything. It is simply to see what is there. We are here on the planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place.
    FROM: Teaching a Stone to Talk, (1982), Book, US
  • IN: White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World (2016) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: The point of going somewhere like the Napo River in Ecuador is not to see the most spectacular anything. It is simply to see what is there. We are here on the planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place.
    FROM: Teaching a Stone to Talk, (1982), Book, US
• The Goncourt Brothers (1)
  • IN: Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do it (2007) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Everything is unique, nothing happens more than once in a life-time. The physical pleasure which a certain woman gave you at a certain moment, the exquisite dish which you ate on a certain day—you will never meet either again. Nothing is repeated, and everything is unparalleled.
    FROM: NULL, (1867), NULL, France
• Nietzsche (1)
  • IN: Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do it (2007) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: ...and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself.
    FROM: The Gay Science, (1882), Book, Germany
• G. C. Waldrep (1)
  • IN: Zona (2012) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: I watched the film until the film itself became a kind of blindness.
    FROM: D. W. Griffith at Gettysburg, (2009), Poem, US
• Albert Camus (1)
  • IN: Zona (2012) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: After all, the best way of talking about what you love is to speak of it lightly.
    FROM: A Short Guide to Towns Without a Past, (1947), Book, France
• Jawaharlal Nehru (1)
  • IN: Working the Room (2010) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: You can hardly expect me to fall in love with a photograph.
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, India
• D. H. Lawrence (2)
  • IN: Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence (2014) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: ‘Out of sheer rage I’ve begun my book on Thomas Hardy. It will be about anything but Thomas Hardy I am afraid – queer stuff – but not bad.’
    FROM: NULL, (1914), NULL, UK
  • IN: Paris Trance (2014) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: The usual plan is to take two couples and develop their relationship. Most of George Eliot’s are on that plan. Anyhow, I don’t want a plot, I should be bored with it. I shall try two couples for a start.
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, UK
• Gustave Flaubert (1)
  • IN: Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence (2014) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Endless explanations of irrelevancies, and none whatever of things indispensable to the subject.
    FROM: Letter to Madame Roger Des Genettes, (1862), Letter, France
• Roland Barthes (1)
  • IN: Out of Sheer Rage: Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence (2014) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: It must all be considered as though spoken by a character in a novel.
    FROM: Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, (1975), Book, France
• Franz Kafka (1)
  • IN: White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World (2016) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: There remained the inexplicable mass of rock. The legend tried to explain the inexplicable. As it came out of a substratum of truth it had in turn to end in the inexplicable.
    FROM: Prometheus, (1931), Short story, Czech Republic
• T. H. Thomas (1)
  • IN: The Missing of the Somme (2011) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: A kaleidoscope of hypothetical contingencies...
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, UK
• Arnold Hauser (1)
  • IN: The Colour of Memory (1989) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: There are happy moments but no happy period in history.
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, Hungary
• John Berger (1)
  • IN: The Colour of Memory (1989) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: What remains of our hopes is a long despair which will engender them again.
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, UK

Cited by

• Rodrico Fresán (1)
  • IN: The Invented Part (2014) Fiction, NULL
    EPIGRAPH: People say it's not what happens in your life that matters, it's what you think happened. But this qualification, obviously, did not go far enough. It was quite possible that the central event in your life could be something that didn't happen, or something you thought didn't happen. Otherwise there'd be no need for fiction, there'd only be memoirs and histories, case histories; what happened -- what actually happened to you and what you thought happened -- would be enough.
    FROM: Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, (2009), Novel, UK