Quotes About Truth

We must know the facts and be guided by them...nature does not forgive fools nor does she spare them the penalties of their folly

But the whole idea of knowledge, even, or especially, of oneself and one's own inner states, attained by direct contact and not dependent on theoretical and conceptual assumptions, is absurd.

There's no one thing that's true. It's all true.

If the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.

I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.

No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure.

But in the night he woke and held her tight as though she were all of life and it was being taken from him. He held her feeling she was all of life there was and it was true.

There will always be people who say it does not exist because they cannot have it. But I tell you it is true and that you have it and that you are lucky even if you die tomorrow.

There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes.

People who write fiction, if they had not taken it up, might have become very successful liars.

That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best - make it all up - but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.

You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know

I'm trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across—not to just depict life—or criticize it—but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me you actually experience the thing. You can't do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful. Because if it is all beautiful you can't believe in it. Things aren't that way.

In Dostoevsky there were things unbelievable and not to be believed, but some so true they changed you as you read them; frailty and madness, wickedness and saintliness, and the insanity of gambling were there to know as you knew the landscape and the roads in turgenev

World War I was the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that has ever taken place on earth. Any writer who said otherwise lied, So the writers either wrote propaganda, shut up, or fought.

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you feel that it all happened to you and after which it all belongs to you.

Blood is thicker than water, The young man said As he knifed his friend For a drooling old bitch And a house full of lies.

He did not care for the lying at first. He hated it. Then later he had come to like it. It was part of being an insider but it was a very corrupting business.

From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough you give it immortality. That is why you write and for no other reason that you know of. But what about all the reasons that no one knows?

But are there not many fascists in your country? There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the times comes.

don't ask me a lot of questions if you don't like the answers

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.

Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.