Steve Toltz Quotes

Truth is not always injured by fiction.

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

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

Fiction comes in all shapes and sizes. Secrets,lies,stories. We all tell them. Sometimes,because we hope to entertain. Sometimes,because we need to distract. And sometimes, because we have to.

All fiction is a process of imagining: whatever you write, in whatever genre or medium, your task is to make things up convincingly and interestingly and new.

I'm defending fiction as a human capacity more than as a popular or dying literary genre.

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

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

Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.

The most common human act that writing a novel resembles is lying. The working novelist lies daily, very complexly, and at great length.

Being a writer of fiction isn't like being a compulsive liar, honestly.

Books do pretend ...but squeezed in between is even more that is true—without what you may call the lies, the pages would be too light for the truth, you see?

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

Writers are liars my dear, surely you know that by now?

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.

Write whatever way you like. Fiction is made of words on a page; reality is made of something else. It doesn't matter how "real" your story is, or how "made up": what matters is its necessity.

In the end, fiction is the craft of telling truth through lies.

Fiction writing is a strange business when you think about it. You sit down and weave a network of lies to explore deeper truths.

Lost Illusion is the undisclosed title of every novel.

First of all, writing at best - certainly fiction writing - more and more I think is magic.

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

Writers can take offense when someone asks what's real or autobiographical in our work because, to us, that's not what counts. The bits taken from life are tiny scales on the dragon's tail - what about that whole beautiful writhing, fire-breathing dragon?

Films are always a fiction, not documentary. Even a documentary is a kind of fiction.

Writers, all the good ones, are Natural Born Liars.

Novels will remain my meat and potatoes, what sustain me imaginatively.