“All of our separate fictions add up to joint reality.”
Unkempt Thoughts (1957), p. 93; also p. 21
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Stanisław Jerzy Lec 28
Polish writer 1909–1966Related quotes
“fiction always surpasses reality but reality is always richer than fiction.”
Source: Outlaws
“The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense.”
Attributed to an interview on Larry King Live; also quoted in Quotable Quotes (1997) edited by Deborah Deford
Attributed variant: The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.
Clancy here expresses an idea evoked in similar statements made by others, all derived from the orignial made by Lord Byron:
Lord Byron: Truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.
Mark Twain: Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, truth isn't.
G. K. Chesterton: Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.
Leo Rosten: Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense. (attributed)
1990s
“The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.”
“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”
“Good fiction creates its own reality.”
Source: The Stanislaski Brothers: Mikhail and Alex
“Reality, as usual, beats fiction out of sight.”
Letter (September 1915), published in The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, edited by Frederick R. Karl and Laurence Davies, Vol. 5, p. 509 ISBN 0521323894
First State of the Union Address (30 January 1961)
1961, State of the Union