Jason Isbell Quotes

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

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

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

You know what ART stands for? Above Real Truth.

Art flies around truth, but with the definite intention of not getting burnt. Its capacity lies in finding in the dark void a place where the beam of light can be intensely caught, without this having been perceptible before.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

Poetry lies its way to the truth.

Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we're stupid.

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.

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

The make-believe world of 'The Black Tower' succeeds by broadcasting larger truths that might otherwise elude us.

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

I did best when I had least truth for my subjects.

fiction is the great lie that tells the truth

Song is not Truth, not Wisdom, but the rose Upon Truths lips, the light in Wisdom's eyes.

A lie is profanity. A lie is the worst thing in the world. Art is the ability to tell the truth.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

Music is not simply an orchestration of something, but it's also not something as trivial as honesty.

My secrets must be poetic to be believable.

I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.

Art lies by its own artifice.

Art is more engaging that propaganda.

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

Sometimes you have to lie. One often has to distort a thing to catch its true spirit.