Jacqueline Woodson 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.

There was something about telling the lie-story and seeing your friends' eyes grow wide with wonder. Of course I got in trouble for lying, but I didn't stop until fifth grade.

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

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

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

I love to invent - avoiding the truth. I need to dramatize.

If I hear a lie in my life with my children, with my wife, my work, my audiences, I want to annihilate myself, vaporize myself and wipe myself off the face of the earth.

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

You better have your story down before you take it to a teenager.

When I was a little kid, I used to get in trouble a lot for lying. Being raised religious, I believed that lying was sinful, so I felt guilty.

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

If you don't want to slip up tomorrow, speak the truth today.

I stand by all the misstatements that I've made.

I refuse to lie to children.

Above all, I would teach him to tell the truth Truth-telling, I have found, is the key to responsible citizenship. The thousands of criminals I have seen in 40 years of law enforcement have had one thing in common: Every single one was a liar.

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

I've always been sort of drawn to storytelling, and I was always very playful growing up.

My greatest qualification for writing fiction was my ability to lie with a straight face as a child.

Justice will overtake fabricators of lies and false witnesses.

It's in literature that true life can be found. It's under the mask of fiction that you can tell the truth.

I don't believe that anything's totally invented... If you're completely inventing a story, there wouldn't be an urge to tell it.

I think you can do a lot with fiction, and in some cases you can say even more in fiction than you can in straight-up documentary journalism.

One ought to have a good memory when he has told a lie.

As a novelist, I ask of myself only that I tell the truth and that I tell it beautifully.

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