Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes

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

I believe in broken, fractured, complicated narratives, but I believe in narratives as a vehicle for truth, not simply as a form of entertainment, though I love entertainment, but also a way of conveying what needs to be conveyed about the works that I care about.

This is not necessarily the answer people want, but ultimately, I think writing is an amoral process. Your ultimate responsibility is to the truth of the story you're trying to tell.

Every dramatist will tell you that they know deep down what happened in the course of making that film and to what degree they took steps that were convenient and to what degree they took steps in telling their story that were dishonest. You know in your heart of hearts.

If you get to participate with a group of artists and make something that's really truthful, that's about the highest you can go, in my opinion.

My thing is to try to tell the truth as honestly as possible. For me, the weight is, how can I tell the truth through fiction, the best that I can?

Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth.

I have to conclude that fiction is better at 'the truth' than a factual record.

In fiction I think we should have no agenda but to tell the truth.

Novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies every novelist attempts to tell the truth about the world.

I dont really write with the idea of trying to teach any lessons. I want to tell a story as truthfully and engagingly as I can, and then let the chips fall where they may.

He says every story has at least some truth in it, even if most are made up.

All stories are true," Skarpi said. "But this one really happened, if that's what you mean.

All stories are true.

Poets themselves, tho' liars by profession, always endeavour to give an air of truth to their fictions.

I've always believed the lies we use to make our fictions reveal the truth with far more honesty than any history or herstory or life story.

Don't make a big distinction between fiction and non-fiction. These are arbitrary distinctions.

We writers – and especially writers for children, but all writers – have an obligation to our readers: it's the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were – to understand that truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.

Fiction is most powerful when it contains most truth; and there is little truth we get so true as that which we find in fiction.

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

I'm very political. Because I read politics every day, so I'm familiar with the world. I approach the films is I'm trying to write what is true, so that supersedes partisan spin, in my opinion. I find partisanship is a thing for cable news and newspaper articles, but it's not interesting for art. I think we all believe what we believe, and I don't think a film is going to change someone's mind.

When I'm writing, I really want to satisfy myself. I've got a story that I am working on and struggling with, and I want to tell it the most effective way I can. That's really what I struggle with. And the thought of who may be reading it may be there somewhere in the back of my mind - I'll never say it's not there because I don't know - but it's not really what I'm thinking about.

Fiction is the microscope of truth.

Lies are attempts to hide the truth by willfully denying facts. Fiction, on the other hand, is an attempt to reveal the truth by ignoring facts.