Fact and fiction quotes:

Send

The blurring of fact and fiction has great commercial potential, which is bound to be corrupting in historical terms. -- Antony Beevor
I like to blur the line between fact and fiction, but not to condescend to the reader by enmeshing her/him into some sort of a postmodern coop. -- Aleksandar Hemon
In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn't be mixed. And if they are, the fictional points should be printed in red ink, the facts printed in black ink. -- Catherine Drinker Bowen
Collins masterfully blends fact and fiction...transcends the historical thriller. -- Jeffery Deaver
Max Allan Collins blends fact and fiction like no other writer. -- Andrew Vachss
Fact is only what you believe and fact and fiction work as a team. -- Jack Johnson
I adore [photography's] uneasy mix of fact and fiction - its dubious claim to truth - its status as history. -- Eleanor Antin
I'm writing books. They're still a mix of fact and fiction and will continue to be. I think it's an interesting place to work. -- James Frey
A blend of fact and fiction has been used in various forms since the dawn of creative writing, starting with sagas and epic poems. -- Antony Beevor
Some people, when they're called before the police, like nothing better than to spill everything, fact and fiction alike, hoping to create a good impression. -- Kobo Abe
In Quiet Dell, Phillips mesmerizingly spins together fact and fiction, vividly imagining the circumstances leading to their deaths, and sets a young female reporter on the case to solve it. -- Elissa Schappell
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists. -- Hannah Arendt
I've always played that edge of fact and fiction. I used to be a filmmaker, and certainly in film that's a line that filmmakers cross more readily and more easily than novelists. -- Ruth Ozeki
I've never been much for self-revelation. In two decades of public life, I always approached the limelight with extreme caution. Not that I kept my personal life off-limits; rather, the personal life I put on display was a blend of fact and fiction. -- James McGreevey
It's what we live for, to be able to make great illusions. The thing about 'Entourage' is everything we do is realistic. We go to the real places, we shoot on location. We get the real people. It's a perfect marriage between fact and fiction. -- Adrian Grenier
I first started writing historical fiction in the late '70s and kept pictures of Kathleen Woodiwiss and Rosemary Rogers on my refrigerator until my first book was published by Avon in 1982. The biggest advantage of this genre for me is that it allows me to blend fact and fiction. -- Virginia Henley
This general tendency to eliminate, by means of unverifiable speculations, the limits of the categories nature presents to us is the inheritance of biology from The Origin of Species. To establish the continuity required by theory, historical arguments are invoked, even though historical evidence is lacking. Thus are engendered those fragile towers of hypothesis based on hypothesis, where fact and fiction intermingle in an inextricable confusion. -- W. R. Thompson
I've always been a fan of books that create an interesting blend of fact and fiction - whether it's Norman Mailer, or 'The Short Timers,' or 'In Cold Blood.' I'm a fan of that genre. -- Mark Boal
Fact and fiction are different truths. -- Patricia MacLachlan
A play is fiction - and fiction is fact distilled into truth. -- Edward Albee
Travel books are, by and large, boring. They lodge uncomfortably between fact, fiction and autobiography. -- Arthur Smith
Impotence, fetishism, bisexuality, and bondage are all facts of life, and our fiction should reflect that. -- Rick Moody
There's not a strong autobiographical strain in my fiction. A few bits of fact here and there. -- Donald Barthelme
I love the fact that it's not only about Star Trek, but about science fiction in general, and science. -- Rene Auberjonois
Fact and fiction carry the same intrinsic weight in the marketplace of ideas. Fortunately, reality has no advertising budget. -- Daniel Suarez
To newspapers and publishing houses I urge the use of fact over fiction, freedom of the press, and responsibility at all times. -- Joely Richardson
As far as I'm concerned, the only difference between fact and what most people call fiction is about fifteen pages in the dictionary. -- Charles de Lint
The romantic appeal of solar sailing has ensured that its advocates consistently come from the worlds of both science fiction and science fact. -- Thomas Mallon
There's a convention that books are mirrors of the real world, but our fact-obsessed age also wants fiction to be factually based and trustworthy. -- Jim Crace
I've only written one science-fiction book: 'Fahrenheit 451.' That book is a book based on real facts and my hatred of people who destroy books. -- Ray Bradbury
The fact is that one of the earliest lessons I learned in business was that balance sheets and income statements are fiction, cash flow is reality. -- Chris Chocola
There's no mistaking the fact that some of the best longform fiction out there now is in American television. 'The Wire' and 'Deadwood' and 'The Sopranos.' -- Kevin Barry
There's so much written about the Titanic, and it's hard to separate what's fact and what's fiction. My understanding is that the way the Titanic was designed, the emphasis was placed on surviving a head-on collision. -- Henry Petroski
Fiction isn't made by scraping the bones of topicality for the last shreds and sinews, to be processed into mechanically recovered prose. Like journalism, it deals in ideas as well as facts, but also in metaphors, symbols and myths. -- Hilary Mantel
I prefer fact to fiction. -- Richard Attenborough
Fact is stranger than fiction. -- Thomas Chandler Haliburton
Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction. -- Carol Alt
Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction -- Carol Alt
Every fiction has its base in fact. -- Gayle Forman
Today's science fiction is tomorrow's science fact. -- Isaac Asimov
Fact-checking is so boring compared to writing fiction. -- Francine Prose
Graphic design is the fiction that anticipates the fact. -- Michael Bierut
There is fact in every fiction and truth in every lie. -- Krisi Keley
A play is fiction and fiction is fact distilled into truth. -- Edward Albee
Our first ideas of life are generally taken from fiction rather than fact. -- Arthur Schopenhauer
--
Property exists by grace of the law. It is not a fact, but a legal fiction. -- Max Stirner
People want movies to be one thing or another; they want it be fact or fiction. -- Laurel Nakadate
Fact is often stranger than fiction because most writers of fiction try to make their stories plausible. -- Richard Posner
The fact that it's science fiction gives you the license to do anything you want to do. -- Lindsay Wagner
Do you not see with your own eyes the chrysalis fact assume by degrees the wings of fiction? -- Alfred de Vigny
Its a heartening fact about the human race that utopian fiction precedes dystopian fiction in the evolution of literature. -- Paul Di Filippo
The adage that fact is stranger than fiction seems to be especially true for the workings of the brain. -- Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
It's a heartening fact about the human race that utopian fiction precedes dystopian fiction in the evolution of literature. -- Paul Di Filippo
I never, as a reader, have been particularly interested in dystopian literature or science fiction or, in fact, fantasy. -- Lois Lowry
As success converts treason into legitimacy, so belief converts fiction into fact, and "nothing is but what is not. -- Samuel Laman Blanchard
Let it be fact, one feels, or let it be fiction; the imagination will not serve under two masters simultaneously. -- Virginia Woolf
In fact, one could argue that the skill of the fiction writer boils down to the ability to exploit intensity. -- James Scott Bell
I love fiction that sounds like fact. As a matter of fact, I also like fact that sounds like fiction. -- Ashwin Sanghi
Part fact part fiction is what life is. And it is always a cover story. I wrote my way out. -- Jeanette Winterson
Fiction has a unique role in conveying Truth. In fact, only fiction that is Truth with a capital T is worthwhile. -- Jerry B. Jenkins
It's always great when you want scientific fact to get a really good science fiction writer to talk to you about it. -- Robin Williams
Sometimes, fact mixed with fiction so thoroughly that, though no lies were told, it was hard to remember what was strictly true. -- Stephenie Meyer
Historical fiction is not only a respectable literary form; it is a standing reminder of the fact that history is about human beings. -- Helen Cam
In journalism, a fact is just a fact. But in fiction, you have to build your case. It has to be made, step by step. -- Edward P. Jones
The ancient historians gave us delightful fiction in the form of fact; the modern novelist presents us with dull facts under the guise of fiction. -- Oscar Wilde
The fact, and the intuition or logic about the fact, are severe coordinates in fiction. In the short story they must cross with hair-line precision. -- Louise Bogan
Fact is stranger than fiction. You see people walking down the street that would never be allowed on television. You have to tone it down. -- Ricky Gervais
The division between faith and reason is a half-measure, till it is frankly admitted that faith has to do with fiction, and reason with fact. -- Leslie Stephen
There are writers who draw immediate attention to the fact that it's fiction. And I like some of that, but it doesn't really have the power... -- Ethan Canin
I see myself as a storyteller, I don't mind if the story is fact or fiction, if it's a good story I'd like to tell it. -- Leanne Pooley
When I'm writing fiction, I'm sort of interested by the fact that somehow or other I can have the feeling of actually seeing things through someone else's eyes. -- Marilynne Robinson
Giving the same value to fiction as to fact in the interest of so-called fairness is to mislead the American people and the press has become party to that. -- Joe Wilson
I didn't want to tell the story of myself, but someone I called myself. If you read yourself as fiction, it's rather more liberating than reading yourself as fact. -- Jeanette Winterson
I am a storyteller, not a historian, and it's my ambition to create something compelling - something unputdownable and riveting - that chimes with the real history but is, in fact, fiction. -- Sara Sheridan

Send