Quotes About Truth

Three Catholic priests are having dinner: a Franciscan, a Dominican, and a Jesuit. Suddenly the lights go out. The Franciscan says, "Let us welcome Sister Darkness and wait patiently for Brother Sunlight to return." The Dominican says, "God gives us the darkness of ignorance so that we might, by contrast, discern the light of truth." The Jesuit finds a flashlight and goes downstairs to flip the breaker.

I'll take honest arrogance over fake humility any day.

So much of what he knew about religion struck him as total bullshit; he was disarmed when the fathers freely admitted that some stories were in fact pious fictions. But, judging his character, they dared him to cut through what he called the crap: to find the core of truth, carefully preserved and offered

Spoke again,and this time he understood, Someone's father once her that it was better to die than to live wrongly. I say: better to live rightly

Maybe it's different in Georgia," Wyatt said. "Out here, pretty much anything in the newspaper is a cheat or a lie.

I was tempted to tell my father the truth, but perhaps it was better to let him go on believing Vincent was depraved, a pervert of some kind, a child abuser. If Dad believed he'd invited a creature from myth and legend to cross his threshold, he'd have to rethink his entire concept of reality. I wasn't sure he was ready for that.

I was tempted to tell my father the truth, but perhaps it was better to let him go on believing that Vincent was depraved, a pervert of some kind, a child abuser. If Dad believed he'd invited a creature from myth and legend to cross his threshold, he'd have to rethink his entire concept of reality. I wasn't sure he was ready for that.

Mary Gaitskill

Her mouth smiled, smiled hard, but her eyes did not smile, ever. Her eyes watched and looked for something they knew they'd never find.

Funny, when you finally faced reality, it was amazing how clearly you could see things.

Get what you get honestly. Use what you get frugally. That's the way to live comfortably And die honorably.

Keegi ei ole nii pime kui see, kes ei taha näha.

Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he cannot distinguish the truth within him or around him, and so loses respect for himself. And having no respect, he ceases to love. Fyodor Dostoevsky

Real You is all you have, and all other paths are false. And in the best case, Real You is so happy to finally be recognized, it rewards you with Originality.

If you let yourself tell those smaller anecdotes or stories, the overarching capital-S Story will eventually rise into view.

Memoir done right is an art, a made thing. It's not just raw reportage flung splat on the page.

The American religion-so far as there is one anymore-seems to be doubt. Whoever believes the least wins, because he'll never be found wrong.

I've plumb forgot where I am for the instant, which is how a good lie should take you. At the same time, I'm more where I was inside myself than before Daddy started talking, which is how lies can tell you the truth.

If you are silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it. Zora Neale Hurston

Truth works a trip wire that permits the book to explode into being.

The memoirist's job is not to add explosive whammies on every page, but to help the average person come in.

Any time you try to collapse the distance between your delusions about the past and what really happened, there is suffering involved. p. xx

our strange cynicism about truth as a possibility has permitted us to accept all manner of bullshit

Novels have intricate plots, verse has musical forms, history and biography enjoy the sheen of objective truth. In memoir, one event follows another. Birth leads to puberty leads to sex. The books are held together by happenstance, theme, and (most powerfully) the sheer, convincing poetry of a single person trying to make sense of the past.