“One handles truths like dynamite. Literature is one vast hypocrisy, a giant deception, treachery. All writers have concealed more than they revealed.
But paradoxically, we create fiction out of human concern for the victims of the revelations. This concern is at the root of literature.”

— Anaïs Nin, book The Diary of Anaïs Nin

The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

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Anaïs Nin278

writer of novels, short stories, and erotica 1903–1977

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“One handles truths like dynamite. Literature is one vast hypocrisy, a giant deception, treachery. All writers have concealed more than they revealed.”

Anaïs Nin book The Diary of Anaïs Nin

The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

“All writers have concealed more than they revealed.”

Anaïs Nin book The Diary of Anaïs Nin

The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
Context: One handles truths like dynamite. Literature is one vast hypocrisy, a giant deception, treachery. All writers have concealed more than they revealed.

“The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and … often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 3 : Facing the Establishment

“It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn’t wait to leave.”

Anatole Broyard (1920–1990) American literary critic

New York Times 16th March 1973.

“As civilization develops, we become more preoccupied with human life, and less conscious of our relation to non-human nature. Literature reflects this, and the more advanced the civilization, the more literature seems to concern itself with purely human problems and conflicts. The gods and heroes of the old myths fade away and give place to people like ourselves.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 2: The Singing School

“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

“I am one of the writers who wish to create serious works of literature which dissociate themselves from those novels which are mere reflections of the vast consumer cultures of Tokyo and the subcultures of the world at large.”

Kenzaburō Ōe (1935) Japanese author

Japan, The Ambiguous, and Myself (1994)

“To overcome the resistance to truth, literature makes use of fictions that are images of truth.”

Harvey Mansfield (1932) Author, professor

How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)
Context: Literature... seeks to entertain — and why is this?... The reason, fundamentally, is that literature knows something that science does not: the human resistance to hearing the truth. Science does not inform scientists of this basic fact.... The wisdom of literature arises mainly from its attention to this point. To overcome the resistance to truth, literature makes use of fictions that are images of truth.

“Italo Calvino said the artist reveals that bit of truth hidden at the bottom of every lie. Art is all about the art of lying. The artist’s imperative is to create a supreme fiction, a lie that, paradoxically, discloses a truth. It's precisely this kind of paradox that Calvino and Fellini adored.”

Damian Pettigrew Canadian filmmaker

On truth and lies, in O Estado de São Paolo (November, 2003)

“The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Moon and Sixpence

Source: The Moon and Sixpence (1919), Ch. 41, p. 140

“One handles truths like dynamite. Literature is one vast hypocrisy, a giant deception, treachery. All writers have concealed more than they revealed.But paradoxically, we create fiction out of human concern for the victims of the revelations. This concern is at the root of literature.”

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Anaïs Nin278

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“One handles truths like dynamite. Literature is one vast hypocrisy, a giant deception, treachery. All writers have concealed more than they revealed.
But paradoxically, we create fiction out of human concern for the victims of the revelations. This concern is at the root of literature.”