and novelist. He is also a journalist who writes about a wide range of topics. His published work includes four novels and several books of non-fiction, which have won a number of literary awards. But Beautiful: A Book about Jazz (1991) first brought Dyer's name to the attention of a wider audience, as it appeared in various translations.
Dyer currently resides in London
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When you are lonely, writing can keep you company. It is a form of self-compensation, a way of making up for things—as opposed to making things up—that did not quite happen. (p.11)
I was constantly surprised by how much people didn’t know. That’s one of the things about traveling, one of the things you learn: many people in the world, even educated ones, don’t know much, and it doesn’t actually matter at all. (p. 15)
Virility of one kind or another is so important if you are to feel like a man. You have to be able to perform stunts. You have to be able to show off in front of your woman, do things she urges you not to do because they look dangerous. (p. 64)
They made two thousand years ago seem like yesterday, and yesterday look like today, just as today would, in time, look like tomorrow. (p. 128)
Dave was committed to making it a truly memorable weekend in the sense that he would remember nothing whatsoever about it. “It’s all about moderation,” he said, “Everything in moderation. Even moderation itself. From this it follows that you must from time to time, have excess. And this is going to be one of those occasions.” (p. 152)
Once you turn forty...the whole world is water off a duck’s back. Once you turn forty you realize that life is there to be wasted. (p. 165)
The best way to learn was by looking, to become articulate in the language of sight. The eye could learn to look after itself. (p. 180)
The idea is to generate paperwork. The word could hardly be more apt. Paper is work. Paper is the big employer. Someone fills out a form (in triplicate), someone files one copy, the other copy goes somewhere else to be filed by someone else, the third is retained by the customer for his records. The most insignificant transaction must be scrupulously recorded and logged, filed and stored, even, on occasion, retrieved. On a trip to Libya, p. 183
I had to be on my own, just so that I would not feel as alone. (p. 201)
I felt I could no longer take the roller-coaster of emotions of travel, its surges of exaltation, its troughs of despondency, it’s large stretches of boredom and inconvenience (p. 202)