“One can't make pure clay of time's mud. There is no life that can be recaptured wholly; as it was. Which is to say that all biography is ultimately fiction.”

Dubin's Lives (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979) p. 27

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Bernard Malamud19

American author 1914–1986

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Education of a Wandering Man (1989), Ch. 1

“For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

“Fiction is made of life/ Of earth and clay/ Of tears and laughter/ Of blood and sweat/ Hear them, the works of an author or a painter/ The singer and the clown/ Preserve the mystery of life.”

Kuruvilla Pandikattu (1957) Indian philosopher

Life: Relish It!
Life: Relish It! (2012)

“No one in life can ever match fiction”

Sabrina Jeffries (1960) American writer

Source: The Truth About Lord Stoneville

“Fiction and nonfiction accomplish very different things, but they can overlap. I wanted my fiction to seem nonfictional, and my nonfiction to seem fictional. At the same time, in fiction I could say things I couldn’t get away with in nonfiction without footnotes. And in nonfiction, I could make things explicit that I couldn’t say in fiction because of the viewpoint of my protagonist.”

Viet Thanh Nguyen (1971) American author of fiction

On the congruent nature of fiction and nonfiction in “Viet Thanh Nguyen: From both sides” https://www.writermag.com/writing-inspiration/author-interviews/viet-thanh-nguyen-sides/ in The Writer (2017 Jan 17)

“They killed her with their chassepot,
With their machine guns,
And rolled her with its flag
In the clay.
And the mud of the fat hangmen
thought they had prevailed.
And with all that, Nicolas,
The Commune is not dead.”

Eugène Edine Pottier (1816–1887) French politician

On l'a tuée à coups de chassepot
A coups de mitrailleuse,
Et roulée avec son drapeau
Dans la terre argileuse.
Et la tourbe des bourreaux gras
Se croyait la plus forte.
Tout ça n'empêche pas, Nicolas
Qu'la Commune n'est pas morte.
Elle n'est pas morte ! (1886).

“Data! data! data!" he cried impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Adventure of the Copper Beeches

Source: The Adventure of the Copper Beeches

“The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history or fiction. It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science.”

Rachel Carson (1907–1964) American marine biologist and conservationist

Acceptance speech of the National Book Award for Nonfiction (1952) for The Sea Around Us; also in Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (1999) edited by Linda Lear, p. 91

“Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are dirty, we are pure.”

Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1900) American writer

Preliminary.
My Summer in a Garden (1870)

“If you wish to make a figure in marble, first make one of clay, and when you have finished it, let it dry and place it in a case which should be large enough, after the figure is taken out of it, to receive also the marble, from which you intend to reveal the figure in imitation of the one in clay.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XI The Notes on Sculpture

“One can't make pure clay of time's mud. There is no life that can be recaptured wholly; as it was. Which is to say that all biography is ultimately fiction.”

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Bernard Malamud19

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