Janette Rallison Quotes

No. I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as a lie--or a prophecy. Say I dreamed it in the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies of our race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its interest. And taking it as a story, what do you think of it?

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

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

Folks will say anything, and next time round they'll believe it.

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

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

I was never a good journalist, because I would make things up. A lot of people frowned on that, which is why I ended up in fiction.

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.

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

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

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

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

It's no sin to tell a good story.

Someone once told me to believe 5 percent of what everybody tells you.

Just because it's in a movie doesn't mean it's real.

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.'

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

Like the saying goes, don't believe everything you read.

The lie, of course, is more interesting.

It is popular to believe that in order to see clearly one must believe nothing. This may work well enough if you are observing cells under a microscope. It will not work if you are writing fiction. For the fiction writer, to believe nothing is to see nothing.

I certainly don't believe you documentary filmmakers. Like me, you are involved in making fiction, and your fiction is just as well organized and just as well predicated, but the big difference between me and you is that I'm honest and you're dishonest. I know I'm telling you lies.

It’s not a lie. It’s a gift for fiction.

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

I do not believe in the Cinema verite. Sometimes a really good lie is better than any truth.

It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false.