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

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

Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense.

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.

The kind of fiction I'm trying to write is about telling the truth.

I think fiction is a very serious thing, that while it is fiction, it is also a revelation of truth, or facts.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.

It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

Surely the job of fiction is to actually tell the truth. It's a paradox that's at the heart of any kind of storytelling.

A play is fiction - and fiction is fact distilled into truth.