Quotes About Truth

The secret is to write just anything, to dare to write just anything, because when you write just anything, you begin to say what is important.

A writer should have this little voice inside of you saying, Tell the truth. Reveal a few secrets here.

I'm interested in memory because it's a filter through which we see our lives, and because it's foggy and obscure, the opportunities for self-deception are there. In the end, as a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

If you only hear one side of the story, at some point, you have to question who the writer is.

An autobiography can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies: it reveals the writer totally.

A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer.

An autobiography usually reveals nothing bad about its writer except his memory.

The idea that you're not a writer until you're published is a lie.

When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.

As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

What I try to keep in mind is that there are going to be a lot of articles that are going to be misrepresentative of what I'm about as a person and as a writer.

There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.

In journalism just one fact that is false prejudices the entire work. In contrast, in fiction one single fact that is true gives legitimacy to the entire work. That's the only difference, and it lies in the commitment of the writer. A novelist can do anything he wants so long as he makes people believe in it.

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

I love historical fiction because there's a literal truth, and there's an emotional truth, and what the fiction writer tries to create is that emotional truth.

A writer's job is to tell the truth.

The challenge for a writer looking at history is to figure out what is history and what is myth. After all, what you are looking at is an interpretation of history, and so at some level, it becomes an interpretation of an interpretation.

When you sit down to write, you have to be prepared to strip all of those voices away, all of the censors away, and talk about what you think the truth is, which I think is really the task of the writer - to get to the truth.

I just can't get used to the idea of being somebody unreal in people's minds. I can't live my life like that. And it's just anathema to being a writer. It's not healthy.

The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal.

Men whose sense of taste is destroyed by sickness, sometimes think honey sour. A diseased eye does not see many things which do exist, and notes many things which do not exist. The same thing frequently takes place with regard to the force of words, when the critic is inferior to the writer.

The truth is, a director wins an Oscar for a writer's script and actors' performances.

The most difficult thing about living as a writer is precisely 'having to write.' Pretending to be a writer is easy. Living freely, reading many books, going on frequent trips, cultivating minor eccentricities... but genuinely being a writer is difficult, because you have to write something that will convince both yourself and readers.

I think my job is to try and be as honest as I can with what is in my mind and how I feel - I think that's what you're supposed to do, if you're a good writer. So I try to do that. I know I do that. I do do that.