Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

You can draw inspiration from anything. If you’re a good storyteller, you can take a dirty look somebody gives you, or if a guy you used to have flirtations with starts dating a new girl, or somebody you’re casually talking to says something that makes you so mad – you can create an entire scenario around that.

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

My passion is bringing storylines around and constructing a full body of work rather than just a 16-bar verse.

The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.

Honesty is the best policy.

For a creative writer possession of the ‚truth‘ is less important than emotional sincerity.

Two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.

One of the things that I tell beginning writers is this: If you describe a landscape, or a cityscape, or a seascape, always be sure to put a human figure somewhere in the scene. Why? Because readers are human beings, mostly interested in human beings. People are humanists. Most of them are humanists, that is.

We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved.

I don’t think there’s such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.

If it’s going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

The Joker that Christopher Nolan created in ‚The Dark Knight‘ had the scar across his mouth, and the first time you heard his explanation for it, he makes you believe that’s how he got it. But then you get into the film, and every time he talks about his scar, it’s a totally different story.

I love that I can tell the truth and have people laugh at it.

I hate talking about music, to tell you the truth.

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

I am who I am and I say what I think. I’m not putting a face on for the record.

Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you’re the funniest person you’ve ever heard of.

You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen.

The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and must therefore be treated with great caution.

I start drawing, and eventually the characters involve themselves in a situation. Then in the end, I go back and try to cut out most of the preachments.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

One must not cheat anyone, not even the world of its victory.

The first stories I wrote when I was 12 were about Mars and landing on Mars.

Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.

No one ever doubts that I mean what I say. The problem is I sometimes say all that I mean.

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain’t so.

I could hardly sit through ‚Frozen.‘ There was an attempt to craft a moral message and to build the story around that, instead of building the story and letting the moral message emerge. It was the subjugation of art to propaganda, in my estimation.

Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet.

As long as the people don’t fear the truth, there is hope. For once they fear it, the one who tells it doesn’t stand a chance. And today, truth is still beautiful… but so frightening.

If we are to take for the criterion of truth the majority of suffrages, they ought to be gotten from those philosophic and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Science is but an image of the truth.

I say what I want to say and do what I want to do. There’s no in between. People will either love you for it or hate you for it.

Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

On one occasion, I accompanied my father to Pinares de Mayari. I was eight or nine years old. How he enjoyed talking when he left the house in Biran! There he was the proprietor of the land where sugar cane, pasture, and other agricultural crops were planted.

You do get certain publications in the States where, if things don’t go according to plan, they flip the story and it becomes very negative.

I can be a cruel person.

There’s a difference between describing and evoking something. You can describe something and be quite clinical about it. To evoke it, you call it up in the reader. That’s what writers do when they’re good.

I’m interested in two things. I’m interested in truth and I’m interested in fairness.

I think carrying moral baggage is very dangerous for an artist. If you have a duty, it’s to be true and not cover up the cracks.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

I once did a three-hour interview with Radio Oxford only to be told the microphone hadn’t picked me up.

Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.

We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

The truth is, I’ve never fooled anyone. I’ve let men sometimes fool themselves.

When in doubt tell the truth.

I don’t mind telling a dark side.

I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: ‚This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.‘ Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

Every time I say something that’s extremely truthful out loud, it literally breaks the Internet.

If you ever injected truth into politics you have no politics.

When I see a story, I ask: is this something I’d like to be in? Is this something I’d like to see? And if I’d like to see it, would I like to tell it?

There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

I’ve often made revisions at that stage that turned out to be mistakes because I wasn’t really in the rhythm of the story anymore. I see a little bit of writing that doesn’t seem to be doing as much work as it should be doing, and right at the end, I will sort of rev it up. But when I finally read the story again, it seems a bit obtrusive.

One truth stands firm. All that happens in world history rests on something spiritual. If the spiritual is strong, it creates world history. If it is weak, it suffers world history.

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.

Silence is the mother of truth.

Maybe stories are just data with a soul.