“Memory is like fiction; or else it's fiction that's like memory.”

“Memory is fiction. We select the brightest and the darkest, ignoring what we are ashamed of, and so embroider the broad tapestry of our lives.”

“If contemporary literary fiction doesn't read a bit like science fiction then it's probably not all that contemporary, is it”

“The great characters of fiction live as truly as the memories of dead men. For the life after death it is not necessary that a man or woman should have lived.”

“They had created themselves together, and they always saw themselves, their youth, their love, their lost youth and lost love, their failures and memories, as a sort of living fiction.”

“The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.”

“Books are like flypaper, memories cling to the printed pages better than anything else.”

“Even if it's going to be a harmful memory, they don't want to let it go. (This is) why sometimes I get such resistance to the work I do. Because it's telling people that your mind might be full of much more fiction than you realize. And people don't like that.”

“Everyone is isolated from everyone else. The concept of society is like a cushion to protect us from the knowledge of that isolation. A fiction that serves as an anesthetic.”

“Portrait likenesses cooked and preserved in memory, likenesses burst in the memory of Mr. Jean Dubuffet, painter.”