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I've written fiction... but the nonfiction has always received the most attention.

I read almost exclusively nonfiction when I read, because even though it's harder to find a great true story, when you find one, the idea that it actually happened is immensely powerful.That's what moves me the most.

People seem to read so much more nonfiction than fiction, and so it always gives me great pleasure to introduce a friend or family member to a novel I believe they'll cherish but might not otherwise have thought to pick up and read.

Fiction is harder for me than nonfiction - more gratifying, as a result, when it succeeds.

I tend to read more nonfiction, really, because when I'm writing I don't like to read other fiction.

People respect nonfiction but they read novels.

But I don't read a lot of fiction. I prefer the nonfiction stuff.

Writing nonfiction of various kinds has been instructive and entertaining as well as paying the rent.

Writing fiction is for me a fraught business, an occasion of daily dread for at least the first half of the novel, and sometimes all the way through. The work process is totally different from writing nonfiction. You have to sit down every day and make it up.

I love nonfiction the most. It's hard to find a good nonfiction story, and that's why I'm not as prolific, I guess, as a lot of people. They're hard to find. I love the nonfiction writer Ben Macintyre. I think he's terrific at the form of telling a story in a cinematic way.