#on-fiction

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

"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."

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

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

"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.."

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

"If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats."

"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."

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

"A good book isn't written, it's rewritten."

"Romance has been elegantly defined as the offspring of fiction and love."

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

"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!"

"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."

"Fiction just makes it all more interesting. Truth is so boring."

"if something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn't there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That's why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones."

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

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

"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."

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