There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.
Charles DickensTruth is what works.
William JamesGeorge Orwell is half journalist, half fiction writer. I’m 100 percent fiction writer… I don’t want to write messages. I want to write good stories. I think of myself as a political person, but I don’t state my political messages to anybody.
Haruki MurakamiJudgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms – in themselves such judgments are stupidities.
Friedrich NietzscheAnyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.
Albert EinsteinI read all the time, and I’m often struck by something I’m reading.
Alice MunroToo much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.
Blaise PascalLife is an unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can comprehend. To understand the things that are at our door is the best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond.
HypatiaIt is all fiction, only autobiographical in the sense it is about a small town. None of the incidents in the book ever happened to me as a child. I didn’t have an eventful childhood.
Harper LeeAs a novelist, you could say that I am dreaming while I am awake, and every day I can continue with yesterday’s dream. Because it is a dream, there are so many contradictions and I have to adjust them to make the story work. But, in principle, the original dream does not change.
Haruki MurakamiI just try to write songs that people are going to have a dialogue about.
Beyonce KnowlesHuman beings need stories, and we’re looking for them in all kinds of places; whether it’s television, whether it’s comic books or movies, radio plays, whatever form, people are hungry for stories.
Paul AusterJustice is truth in action.
Benjamin DisraeliLiterature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.
C. S. LewisMan will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.
Winston ChurchillWe grow older, but we do not change. We become more sophisticated, but at bottom we continue to resemble our young selves, eager to listen to the next story and the next, and the next.
Paul AusterIn Germany I have been acknowledged again since the fall of Hitler, but my works, partly suppressed by the Nazis and partly destroyed by the war; have not yet been republished there.
Hermann HesseI never liked Hans Christian Andersen because I knew he was always getting at me.
J. R. R. TolkienIf an eloquent speaker speak not the truth, is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?
Thomas CarlyleEach book I’ve done somehow finds its own unique form, a specific way it has to be written, and once I find it, I stick with it.
Paul AusterI would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.
Virginia WoolfPoetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
AristotleIt doesn’t bother me when people try to deconstruct my songs – because at least they’re looking at the lyrics, and paying attention to the way the story is told.
Taylor SwiftWhen you pick up a book, everyone knows it’s imaginary. You don’t have to pretend it’s not a book. We don’t have to pretend that people don’t write books. That omniscient third-person narration isn’t the only way to do it. Once you’re writing in the first person, then the narrator is a writer.
Paul AusterA serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.
Ernest HemingwayIt is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.
Friedrich NietzscheWe are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.
Isaac NewtonYour purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Relevant detail, couched in concrete, colorful language, is the best way to recreate the incident as it happened and to picture it for the audience.
Dale CarnegieMy mind doesn’t work, my memories don’t work like a computer file where I can just retrieve them and, boy, there it is. My mind is selective in terms of memories. When I try to think back to college or high school, there are gaps. I try to fill them in. But I can’t tell you it’s always the truth.
John KennedyIn the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.
Friedrich NietzscheI read poetry to save time.
Marilyn MonroeNot everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.
Franz KafkaThe true and the approximately true are apprehended by the same faculty; it may also be noted that men have a sufficient natural instinct for what is true, and usually do arrive at the truth. Hence the man who makes a good guess at truth is likely to make a good guess at probabilities.
AristotleNaturally, my stories are about women – I’m a woman. I don’t know what the term is for men who write mostly about men. I’m not always sure what is meant by ‚feminist.‘ In the beginning, I used to say, ‚Well, of course I’m a feminist.‘ But if it means that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I’m not.
Alice MunroPlato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.
AristotleA book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.
Franz KafkaWe learned about honesty and integrity – that the truth matters… that you don’t take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules… and success doesn’t count unless you earn it fair and square.
Michelle ObamaI’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.
Maya AngelouMusic 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.
RihannaDoing graphic novels is cool! It’s fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out.
Anthony BourdainThe ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.
Robert FrostStories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.
Paul AusterJane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.
J. K. RowlingThe truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.
Leonardo da VinciI’ve learned a lot since I was a new mother. My approach to struggle and shame now is to talk to yourself like you’d talk to someone you love and reach out to tell your story.
Brene BrownI don’t understand what it’s all about or what’s worth what, but if the people in the Swedish Academy decide that x, y or z wins the Nobel Prize, then so be it.
Richard P. FeynmanHe who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
Thomas JeffersonGreen Eggs and Ham was the story of my life. I wouldn’t eat a thing when I was a kid, but Dr. Seuss inspired me to try cauliflower!
Jim CarreyFantasy is uni-age. You can start it in the creche, and it follows you to death.
Terry PratchettOn 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.
Fidel CastroWhen a family film is done well, there’s a character that every member of the audience can relate to. I want to be one of those guys.
Dwayne JohnsonEvery hero becomes a bore at last.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe 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.
The WeekndMystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.
Friedrich NietzscheThere is not a truth existing which I fear… or would wish unknown to the whole world.
Thomas JeffersonLive truth instead of professing it.
Elbert HubbardLet blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
Warren Buffett‚Bellyache‘ is totally fictional. I like writing about things that aren’t real. The song is about not trusting anyone and then putting trust in yourself and realizing that you don’t know what you are doing, either. Or realizing that things you do with a group of people that you think are cool in the moment are ultimately all on you.
Billie EilishSomething unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.
Benjamin DisraeliTruth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.
Albert Camus