A Quote by A. S. Byatt

Autobiographies tell more lies than all but the most self-indulgent fiction.

A. S. Byatt

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Fiction Lies More Most Self Tell Than

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A. S. Byatt
English - Novelist
Born: August 24, 1936

The lies most devastating to our self-esteem are not so much the lies we tell as the lies we live.

Nathaniel Branden

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

I bristle at the implication that only with the help of a Big Six editor does a novel lose its self-indulgent aspects. Before the advent of self-publishing, there were plenty of self-indulgent novels on the shelves.

Jennifer Armintrout

They are longing for a war with Iran. Iran is no more a harm to us than was Iraq or Afghanistan. They invented an enemy, they tell lies, lies, lies. The New York Times goes along with their lies, lies, lies. And they don't stop. When the public that's lied to 30 times a day it's apt to believe the lies, is not it?

Gore Vidal

For me, writing essays, prose and fiction is a great way to be self-indulgent.

Diablo Cody

The biographies and autobiographies are on the whole more impressive than the fiction of the last two decades, but the freakish best sellers among them are least likely to withstand the test of time.

Harold Acton

Writers tell more truths, and more lies, than most.

Mason Cooley

There is more to be pondered in the grain and texture of life than traditional fiction allows. The work of essayists is vital precisely because it permits and encourages self-knowledge in a way that is less indirect than fiction, more open and speculative.

Charles J. Shields

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

Most people when they have autobiographies, they're not autobiographies, they're biographies written by a ghost writer.

Jeff Dunham

I am opposed to autobiographies, mainly because most autobiographies lie.

Kamal Haasan

We live in an idiotic capitalist self-indulgent society where the sex life of a pop star is more important than impending starvation, land mines and child soldiers in Africa, or more interesting than the world's biggest man-made natural disaster in oil fields of the Middle East.

Peter Menzel

All autobiographies are lies. I do not mean unconscious, unintentional lies: I mean deliberate lies.

George Bernard Shaw

The American press is all about lies! All they tell is lies, lies and more lies!

Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf

I think the lies I make the most are in regards to my hopes and intentions for myself. As for lies I tell other people - I will certainly tell lies. When somebody is very ill and looks awful, and you tell them they look nice. Or if you just ate the last cookie, if someone asked me if I ate the last cookie, I would definitely lie about that.

Jesse Ball

We reveal more of ourselves in the lies we tell than we do when we try to tell the truth.

Dorothy Salisbury Davis

A Quote by A. S. Byatt

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