This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it human and otherwise are imaginary excepting only certain of the fairy folk whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof.

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.

I had a 2-week courtship with a fellow student in the fiction workshop in Iowa and a 5-minute wedding in a lawyer's office above the coffee shop where we'd been having lunch that day. And so I sent a cable to my father saying 'By the time you get this Daddy I'll already be Mrs. Blaise!'

A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.

Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth. Is life kind or cruel? Yes Literature answers. Are people good or bad? You bet says Literature. But unlike other systems of knowing Literature declines to eradicate one truth in favor of another.

Truth is always strange stranger than fiction.

Truth is so hard to tell it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

For truth is always strange stranger than fiction.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature to those who really like to study people is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.