“The history of most fictions would be far stranger than the fictions themselves; but it would be a dark and sad chronicle.”
The Monthly Magazine
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Letitia Elizabeth Landon 785
English poet and novelist 1802–1838Related quotes

“Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got used to it.”
1910s
Source: A Little Book in C Major (1916)

Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XV
Misquoted as "Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense." by Laurence J. Peter in "Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time", among many others.
Following the Equator (1897)
Source: Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

“But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.”

“Tis strange - but true; for Truth is always strange,
Stranger than Fiction”
Variant: For truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.

“Truth is stranger than fiction — to some people, but I am measurably familiar with it.”
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XV
Following the Equator (1897)

“Truth may be stranger than fiction, goes the old saw, but it is never as strange as lies.”
Or, for that matter, as true.
Source: The Areas of My Expertise (2005), p. 18