Francis Bacon Quotes

You can't really pretend something is rosier than it is and expect people to buy it.

The truth is always less interesting than the fiction.

My friend, the truth is always implausible, did you know that? To make the truth more plausible, it's absolutely necessary to mix a bit of falsehood with it. People have always done so.

Lies are just stories, and stories are all that matter. We all tell stories. Some are more truthful than others, maybe, but in the end the only thing that counts is what you can make people believe.

All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe.

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

Truth is so much more interesting than the fiction we're used to.

Let me tell you the truth. The truth is what is, and what should be is a fantasy. A terrible, terrible lie that someone gave to the people long ago.

People say I make up wild stories. But all I have to do is write down stuff that really happens.

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

They say truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, but there's such a thing as believability when you're writing a novel.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

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

This is why fiction is an art, and life is not - how much more affecting is the lie than the truth.

Truth is a well-known pathological liar. It invariably turns out to be Fiction wearing a fancy frock. Self-proclaimed Fiction, on the other hand, is entirely honest. You can tell this, because it comes right out and says, "I'm a Liar," right there on the dust jacket.

Truth is not always injured by fiction.

The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.

There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn't necessarily a lie even if it didn't necessarily happen.

There is nothing as boring as the truth.

Then I went back into the house and wrote, It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining.

A lie was something that hadn't happened but might just as well have.

Every edit is a lie.

Lost Illusion is the undisclosed title of every novel.

Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

The theater itself is a lie. Its deaths are mere special effects. Its tales never happened. Even the histories are distorted for dramatic effect. The theater is unnatural, a place of imagination. But the theater tells the audience something true: that the world requires judgments.