Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter
The Twilight Zone, "The Fugitive" (1962).
The Twilight Zone
Variant: Science fiction is the improbable made possible, and fantasy is the impossible made probable.
Context: It is said that science fiction and fantasy are two different things. Science fiction is the improbable made possible, and fantasy is the impossible made probable.
“Fiction just makes it all more interesting. Truth is so boring.”
Charlaine Harris book Dead as a Doornail
Source: Dead as a Doornail
“Sometimes the best way to find the truth is to create a fiction.”
John Twelve Hawks American writer
From Interviews
“Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.”
Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer
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.
“I shall try to tell the truth, but the result will be fiction.”
Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist
“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist
Pablo Picasso said something very similar. Perhaps it is the source? From Herschel B. Chipp’s Theories of Modern Art: "We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand."
Disputed
“Fiction has to be plausible. All history has to do is happen.”
Harry Turtledove (1949) American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian
Interview at the World Science Fiction Convention (25 June 1998) http://www.chicon.org/gohs/turtldov.htm
