“Kids, the fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists.”
It (1986)
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Stephen King733
American author 1947Related quotes
“Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.”
Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer
Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming (2013)
Context: We writers – and especially writers for children, but all writers – have an obligation to our readers: it's the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were – to understand that truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.
“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist
Pablo Picasso said something very similar. Perhaps it is the source? From Herschel B. Chipp’s Theories of Modern Art: "We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand."
Disputed
“A play is fiction — and fiction is fact distilled into truth.”
Edward Albee (1928–2016) American playwright
The New York Times (18 September 1966)
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XV
Misquoted as "Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense." by Laurence J. Peter in "Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time", among many others.
Following the Equator (1897)
Source: Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
“We deny that poetry is fiction; its merit and its power lie alike in its truth:”
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist
The Monthly Magazine
“Non-fiction contains facts, fiction contains truth.”
Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist
Next Testament (Boom Studios, 2014)
“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
G. K. Chesterton book The Club of Queer Trades
The Club of Queer Trades (1905) Ch. 4 "Speculation of the House Agent"
“Truth becomes fiction when the fiction's true;
Real becomes not-real when the unreal's real.”
Cao Xueqin book Dream of the Red Chamber
Jia zuo zhen shi zhen yi jia,
Wu wei you chu you huan wu.
Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (c. 1760), Chapter 5