Patricia MacLachlan Quotes

What's real and what's true aren't necessarily the same.

There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth.

Truth is not a matter of argumentation and conviction; it is not the outcome of opinion.

Facts do not constitute truth.

If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.

Stories are a different kind of true.

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

The facts are always less than what really happened.

The truth is always less interesting than the fiction.

We're always just telling stories, and stories are always just approximations of the truth. It's never the truth exactly.

Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.

What is truth? What is a true story? Who is telling the truth, and what is truth in this world today?

You don't know reality until someone makes a fiction of it. Reality needs the completion of fiction.

There's truth and then there's fiction - I think truth does exist and you can present it.

It really doesn't matter if it happened exactly how I say it happened.

What I want people to consider is that no matter what it is we want to believe, and no matter what story it is we want to jam the world into, the truth is the truth.

Truth is stranger than fiction-to some people, but I am measurably familiar with it.

The facts, even the real ones, must be imagined before they can be stated.

All stories are true.

The truth doesn't care what we think of it.

Truth is not always injured by fiction.

Every fiction has its base in fact.

History is the recital of facts represented as true. Fable, on the other hand, is the recital of facts represented as fiction.

So you want another story?" Uhh... no. We would like to know what really happened." Doesn't the telling of something always become a story?" Uhh... perhaps in English. In Japanese a story would have an element of invention in it. We don't want any invention. We want the 'straight facts,' as you say in English." Isn't telling about something--using words, English or Japanese--already something of an invention? Isn't just looking upon this world already something of an invention?

Everything isn't subjective. Reality also matters. Truth matters. It is still a word with meaning.