Sylvia Kristel Quotes

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

Novel-writing is a bit like deception. You lie as little as you possibly can. That's the way I do it, anyway.

I adore falseness. I don't want you to tell me accurately what happened yesterday. I want you to lie about it, to exaggerate, to entertain me.

What is the difference between the novelist and the liar? At some moments, I have often wondered.

I always say show me a storyteller who doesn't embellish, and I'll show you a bad one.

Writing stories is the habit of lying put to good use.

Oh, mercy, I think we're all storytellers, you know. You think of the excuses you told your parents for why you got home late. I just never gave it up.

When I was a kid, I got in trouble for lying a lot, and I had a teacher say, 'Instead of lying, write it down, because if you write it down, it's not a lie anymore; it's fiction.'

Lying and art are very allied. But after you lie, you get to the truth.

My life isn't very racy or exciting so I make things up, tell stories. I like telling stories.

People don't really want reality. They want theater, and that's different.

Writers tell more truths, and more lies, than most.

Falsehood is a critical element in fiction. Part of the thrill of being told a story is the chance of being hoodwinked. . .The telling of lies is a sort of sleight of hand that displays our deepest feelings about life.

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

I've been falsely accused of drawing too much from real life. But I am a petty thief - I take little things. And, I mean, I can hardly write 10 words before I start to make things up. I start to invent, because that's what I want to do. I'm running away to an invented place.

The moment kids start to lie is the moment storytelling begins. They are talking about things they didn't see. It's amazing. It's a wonderful moment. Parents should celebrate. 'Hurray! My boy finally started to lie!' All right! It calls for celebration.

A writer of fiction is really... a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men.

My mother talked about the stories I used to spin as a child of three, before I started school. I would tell this story about what school I went to and what uniform I wore and who I talked to at lunchtime and what I ate, and my mother was like, 'This girl does not even go to school.'

I shall try to tell the truth, but the result will be fiction.

Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction.

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

The truth is always less interesting than the fiction.

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

I make it all up, and all of it is true.

You can be very honest without telling the truth, at least in art.