“Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.”

— Neil Gaiman

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.

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Neil Gaiman 108

English fantasy writer 1960

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