#on-fiction

"Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth."

"Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream."

"Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures."

"I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which 'Escape' is now so often used. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?"

"The child intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal, they are not untrue ..."

"Neither novels or their readers benefit from any attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species."

"Tis strange,-but true; for truth is always strange;Stranger than fiction: if it could be told,How much would novels gain by the exchange!How differently the world would men behold!"

"A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth."

"A good piece of fiction, in my view, does not offer solutions. Good stories deal with our moral struggles, our uncertainties, our dreams, our blunders, our contradictions, our endless quest for understanding. Good stories do not resolve the mysteries of the human spirit but rather describe and expand up on those mysteries."

"One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper."

"A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written."

"Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity."

"Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life."

"There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong."

"That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth."

"In the end, fiction is the craft of telling truth through lies."

"I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story."

"Fiction was invented the day Jonah arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale.."

"There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth."

"Fiction that adds up, that suggests a "logical consistency,"or an explanation of some kind, is surely second-rate fiction; for the truth of life is its mystery."