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I think one can be more honest in fiction than in a memoir.

Truth is much stranger than fiction and, often, much more powerful.

Fiction is a lie that is told in the service of truth.

Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.

The exquisite truth is to believe in something that maybe you know is a fiction, but you believe in it willingly.

Contrary to all those times you've heard a writer confess at a reading that he writes fiction because he is a pathological liar, fiction writing is all about telling the truth.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

Truth is more peculiar than fiction. Life is really a startling place.

I have always felt that the truth is prophetic, and that if you describe precisely what you see and give it life with your imagination, then what you write ought to have lasting value, no matter what the mood of your prose.

Telling ourselves that fiction is in a sense true and at the same time not true is essential to the art of fiction. It's been at the heart of fiction from the start. Fiction offers both truth, and we know it's a flat-out lie. Sometimes it drives a novelist mad. Sometimes it energizes us.