#on-fiction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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!"

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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 excuse for anyone to write fiction for public consumption unless he has been called to do so by the presence of a gift. It is the nature of fiction not to be good for much unless it is good in itself."

"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."