A Quote by W. Somerset Maugham

Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more telling. To know that a thing actually happened gives it a poignancy, touches a chord, which a piece of acknowledged fiction misses. It is to touch this chord that some authors have done everything they could to give you the impression that they are telling the plain truth.

W. Somerset Maugham

Quote Topics

Acknowledged Actually Authors Chord Could Done Everything Fiction Give Gives Happened Impression Know Misses More Only Piece Plain Poignancy Some Stranger Stranger Than Fiction Telling Than Thing Touch Truth Truth Is Which

Quote Author

W. Somerset Maugham
British - Novelist
January 25, 1874 - December 16, 1965

Truth is only stranger than fiction if you're a stranger to the truth. Which means you're either a liar or you're fictional.

Pseudonymous Bosch

Many people have observed that truth is stranger than fiction. This has led some intellectuals to conclude that it's stranger than non-fiction as well.

Brad Holland

Burroughs called his greatest novel 'Naked Lunch,' by which he meant it's what you see on the end of a fork. Telling the truth. It's very difficult to do that in fiction because the whole process of writing fiction is a process of sidestepping the truth. I think he got very close to it, in his way, and I hope I've done the same in mine.

J. G. Ballard

Telling ourselves that fiction is in a sense true and at the same time not true is essential to the art of fiction. It's been at the heart of fiction from the start. Fiction offers both truth, and we know it's a flat-out lie. Sometimes it drives a novelist mad. Sometimes it energizes us.

Joanna Scott

Then I began to play. Variations on a G major chord, the most wonderful chord known to mankind, infinitely happy. I could live inside a G major chord, with Grace, if she was willing. Everything uncomplicated and good about me could be summed up by that chord.

Maggie Stiefvater

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

Mark Twain

The - the sort of thing that I want to do is to strike a resonant chord of universality in other people, which is best done by fiction.

Joyce Carol Oates

Sometimes I don't tell the truth, which is telling the truth about not telling the truth. I think people don't tell the truth when they're afraid that something bad's going to happen if they tell the truth. I say things all the time that I could really get into trouble for, but they kind of blow over.

Cher

Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more interesting.

William Randolph

There's an expression, "God is in the details," and it applies to nothing more than it does to the writing of fiction. To that and to the art of telling good lies. And what is fiction but the telling of lies?

Donna Levin

Truth is more of a stranger than fiction. When in doubt, tell the truth. If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything. Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are economical in its use.

Mark Twain

Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.

Mark Twain

It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

Mark Twain

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, but usually fiction is just better.