Quotes About Storytelling

The essence of a novelist is to invent things and speak the truth, at the same time.

As if there could be true stories: things happen in one way, and we retell them in the opposite way.

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, but usually fiction is just better.

As human beings, the closest we can get to truth is through story.

To tell you the truth, I never wanted to become a moviemaker. It was like I was a cinepihile, and I go, like, three or four times per week to the cinema, and I like to watch films.

The great thing about fiction is that you can start off by telling the truth, then start making stuff up like crazy whenever you feel like it.

In few people is discretion stronger than the desire to tell a good story.

I'm not very interested in telling the facts. I have a lot of investment in telling the truth.

The kind of fiction I'm trying to write is about telling the truth.

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

I don't steer towards anything. I steer towards character and truth. If it's funny then so be it. If it's dramatic, so be it. I just steer towards characters.

there are elements of truth in all great fiction

I can't help it if I stretch the truth, not if that's the way it happened.

In fiction I think we should have no agenda but to tell the truth.

Every Gag I tell must be based on truth. No matter how much I may exaggerate it, it must have a certain amount of Truth.... Now Rumor travels Faster, but it don't stay put as long as Truth.

...he was after all, a novelist...and a novelist was simply a fellow who got paid to tell lies. The bigger the lies, the better the pay.

A story has value whether it's true or not.

All stories are born out of illusion, but that doesn't mean they're not worth telling.

I love books because I don't have to wait for the commercials to be over to find out what happens.

To tell you the truth. I am a wild and passionate novelist. I am therefore easily given over to telling wild and passionate lies.

...I only told you about it because I thought I might get a laugh out of you for once even if it wasn't the truth, Jessie. Things don't have to be true to talk about 'em, you know.

The novel and the film of 'The Color Purple' are both works of the imagination that make claim to historical truth.

Words come alive from a page or script because both the writer and actor were brave enough to neither deny or invent their truth

why let the truth get in the way of a good story?