“The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.”

“I've always believed the lies we use to make our fictions reveal the truth with far more honesty than any history or herstory or life story.”

Charles de Lint (1951) author

“Reality is much more absurd and complex than any fiction.”

Yan Lianke (1958) Chinese novelist and satirist

“Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

“The history of most fictions would be far stranger than the fictions themselves; but it would be a dark and sad chronicle.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

“Just because it's fiction doesn't mean it's any less true.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

“Tis strange - but true; for Truth is always strange,
Stranger than Fiction”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

“Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it.”

John Hersey (1914–1993) American journalist, novelist, professor

“The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

“As far as I'm concerned, some of the best literature of the last hundred years has come out of the genre tradition and of course the best of it challenges expectations just as the best of literary fiction challenges those expectations. But it's not that genre fiction is any more a constraint than mimetic fiction. So I see myself very much as a genre writer. I love the fantastic genres. I see what I'm doing as a development of them but very much a part of them. I never feel that I'm leaving them behind. I try and be as experimental and avant-garde and stretching as I can be but I don't see that as turning my back on the genre at all. Genre has always been able to encompass that.”

China Miéville (1972) English writer