“Any story worth telling relates to real life in some meaningful way.”

“In real life, I'm just an actor. I play pretend. I tell stories.”

“I have no way of knowing that your story is not true — but you have no way of knowing that my story isn't true. So I will choose the one that I love. I will close the one that, if it's true, makes this reality one worth living in. I'll act as if the life I hope for is real life, and the life that disgusts me — your life, your view of life — is the lie.”

“The real story can never be told. It is untellable. The real (as real) is inaccessible, being gone in time. There is no point in glancing at the past, in summoning it up, in re-examining it, except on behalf of art — that is, the meaningful-real.”

“Tell the story as if it were only of interest to the small circle of your characters, of which you may be one. There is no other way to put life into the story.”

“Of course you're real-like any thought or any story. It's real when you're in it.”

“Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.”

“This is a brief life, but in its brevity it offers us some splendid moments, some meaningful adventures.”

“It is not my purpose to attempt a real autobiography. I simply want to tell the story of my experiments with truth…as my life consists of nothing but those experiments.”

“I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.”