A Quote by Margaret Atwood

The true story is vicious and multiple and untrue after all. Why do you need it? Don’t ever ask for the true story.

Margaret Atwood

Quote Topics

After Ask Ever Multiple Need Story True True Story Untrue Vicious Why

Quote Author

Margaret Atwood
Canadian - Novelist
Born: November 18, 1939

The true story of every person in this world is not the story you see, the external story. The true story of each person is the journey of his or her heart.

John Eldredge

But the truth is that no person ever understands another, from beginning to end of life, there is no truth that can be known, only the story we imagine to be true, the story they really believe to be true about themselves; and all of them lies.

Orson Scott Card

You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let's say, and afterward you ask, 'Is it true?' and if the answer matters, you've got your answer . . . Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.

Tim O'Brien

Hateful material travels the globe. A few years ago, CNN, America's Der Sturmer, ran a story about Black parents being so low down that they abandoned their children and the children had to eat rats. I was at a University in Wisconsin at the time and the mother of a student from South Africa called to see whether the story was true. She had seen it all the way over there. The story was untrue. The children lied. CNN never corrected the story.

Ishmael Reed

'The Story Of A Marriage' was initially a short story I wrote, and before that, it was a family story. It was a story that a relative of mine told me about herself in the '50s, and it was a story that no one else in my family believes, and it might not be true.

Andrew Sean Greer

If it is true ... that no one has a life worth thinking about whose life story cannot be told, does it not then follow that life could be, even ought to be, lived as a story, that what one has to do in life is to make the story come true?

Hannah Arendt

Take the story of Cain and Abel. Why were we given that story? Scientifically, you may have an explanation for it, but I'm not approaching it from the scientific point of view. I'm saying: Why do we need that? It's a sordid story, a depressing story, a dark story. Why should I believe that I'm a descendant of either Cain or Abel? Thank God there is a third son! [Genesis 4:25]

Elie Wiesel

I have made up thousands of stories; I have filled innumerable notebooks with phrases to be used when I have found the true story, the one story to which all these phrases refer. But I have never yet found the story. And I begin to ask, Are there stories?

Virginia Woolf

Actually, a myth is a story that is not just not true, but it's a story that is especially true. And I think the myth of Jesus is especially true.

Jay Parini

I feel with this film that as long as we tell Philomena's story and as long as we're true to her, which Jeff and Steve have already done by writing the story... we must not sell her short;. She's a most remarkable woman and all my concern was that we must be absolutely true to her story.

Judi Dench

When we try to describe the truth with words, we distort it and it's no longer truth--it's our story. The story may be true for us, but that doesn't mean it's true for anyone else.

Miguel Angel Ruiz

We're special because dreams that are impossible anywhere else, come true here. That's not just my story. That's your story. That's our story.

Marco Rubio

I'd love to do a love story. I've never done a true love story, which would be awesome. But then again, I don't think I've had a true love story, even in my own life. Maybe that's something I want to explore in my own life first.

Lucas Hedges

I look for the dark story, where something secret was done. I read and read and pick up the trail of a true story. I use nothing but true stories. They are so much better than phony ones.

Alan Furst

The way I write, I need to tell the true story. I can't just make a story up. So I have to let the things happen to me and allow myself to work through my thoughts.