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Stephen King 733
American author 1947Related quotes
“Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.”
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.”
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
“We deny that poetry is fiction; its merit and its power lie alike in its truth:”
The Monthly Magazine
“It’s not a lie. It’s a gift for fiction.”
“A play is fiction — and fiction is fact distilled into truth.”
The New York Times (18 September 1966)
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
“Non-fiction contains facts, fiction contains truth.”
Next Testament (Boom Studios, 2014)
“Which is better, truth that is a lie or the lie that is truth?”
Source: The Judges