“The poets are wrong of course. … But then poets are almost always wrong about facts. That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth: which is why the truth they speak is so true that even those who hate poets by simple and natural instinct are exalted and terrified by it.”
Gavin Stevens in Ch. 5
The Town (1957)
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William Faulkner 214
American writer 1897–1962Related quotes
“But to be a poet is to accept the responsibility of speaking the truth!”
Source: The Rahotep series, Book 3: Egypt: The Book of Chaos (2011), Ch. 2
Context: I see I have shocked you all a little. But to be a poet is to accept the responsibility of speaking the truth! No matter what the cost to my personal safety [... ] in matters of men and this world. I’m a poet, not a complete fool…

Carol Ness, "Beat Poet Gregory Corso, 70, Dies of Cancer" http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/01/18/MN143830.DTL, San Francisco Chronicle, 2001-01-18. : On Gregory Corso.
2000s
Ch 21
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Lux
“Words are the only bullets in truth’s bandolier. And poets are the snipers.”
Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 3 (p. 192)

“Poets are all who love, who feel great truths,
And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.”
Scene XVI, The Hesperian Sphere
Festus (1839)

they weren’t always
Source: Blue Mars (1996), Chapter 13, “Experimental Procedures” (p. 657)