Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000), Ch. 32 : Morning
Context: One of the ghosts — an old woman — beckoned, urging her to come close.
Then she spoke, and Mary heard her say:
"Tell them stories. They need the truth. You must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories."
That was all, and then she was gone. It was one of those moments when we suddenly recall a dream that we’ve unaccountably forgotten, and back in a flood comes all the emotion we felt in our sleep. It was the dream she’d tried to describe to Atal, the night picture; but as Mary tried to find it again, it dissolved and drifted apart, just as these presences did in the open air. The dream was gone.
All that was left was the sweetness of that feeling, and the injunction to tell them stories.
“The true story is vicious and multiple and untrue after all. Why do you need it? Don’t ever ask for the true story.”
Last update June 3, 2021.
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Do you have more details about the quote "The true story is vicious and multiple and untrue after all. Why do you need it? Don’t ever ask for the true story." by Margaret Atwood?
Margaret Atwood 348
Canadian writer 1939Related quotes
Ted Hughes
(1930–1998) English poet and children's writer
The Paris Review interview
Context: Why do human beings need to confess? Maybe if you don’t have that secret confession, you don’t have a poem — don’t even have a story. Don’t have a writer. If most poetry doesn’t seem to be in any sense confessional, it’s because the strategy of concealment, of obliquity, can be so compulsive that it’s almost entirely successful.