Anne Lamott Quotes

A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way. It's a lie if you make something up. But you make it up in the name of truth, and then you give your heart to expressing it clearly.

Anyone who claims to be good at lying is obviously bad at lying. Thus - as a writer myself - I cannot comment on whether or not writers are exceptionally good liars, because whatever I said would actually mean its complete opposite.

It's kind of strange-- in fiction you get to tell lies and are applauded for it.

Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.

I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.

All writing is the same: It's just making up lies until it starts to sound like the truth. That's what I do.

Everyone here would die for the sake of truth. Everyone here lies constantly for the tiniest chance of personal gain. This is what it means to be a scientist.

The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

Some things can be both real and imaginary at the same time, . . . some lies can be true, . . . broken faith may be restored.

Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.

Plato said that poets should be excluded from the ideal republic because they are such liars. I am a poet, and I affirm that this is true. About no subject are poets tempted to lie so much as about their own lives; I know one of them who has floated at least five versions of his autobiography, none of them true. I of course - being also a novelist - am a much more truthful person than that. But since poets lie, how can you believe me?

Self-portraiture is something one should never get involved in, since it is wrong to lie even though one endeavours to tell the truth.

Film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth.

I try to conceal art with art.

I tell everyone a different story. That way nothing's ever boring, even when they turn and say goodbye.

Lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth.

Art is not truth; art is the lie which makes us see the truth.

Every true artist must, in his own way, be a magician, a charlatan.

There is something else which has the power to awaken us to the truth. It is the works of writers of genius. They give us, in the guise of fiction, something equivalent to the actual density of the real, that density which life offers us every day but which we are unable to grasp because we are amusing ourselves with lies.

The only way to retrieve a secret,once known, is to replace it with a lie.

In the theater lying is looked upon as an occupational disease.

Deception is one of the quickest ways to gain little things and lose big things.

It is a general rule that when the grain of truth cannot be found, men will swallow great helpings of falsehood.

[People] want me to finish things. But I see them in such a way and paint them accordingly. ... Nothing is simpler than to complete pictures in a superficial sense. Never does one lie so cleverly as then.