The reason that war is such a fascinating subject for writers is because it's a revealer. Put a bunch of people in an adrenaline-fuelled life-or-death situation and their fundamental behaviours are exposed the scrim is taken away and the motivations behind each personality come out to play.

As for charity it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned and the ultimate consequence to the general good are apt to be at complete war with one another.

I don't think you can tell the objective truth about a person. That's why people write novels.

It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.

I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach one that writing is hard work and two that you have to give up a great deal of life your personal life to be a writer.

A lot of journalism wants to have what they call objectivity without them having a commitment to pursuing the truth but that doesn't work. Objectivity requires belief in and a commitment toward pursuing the truth - having an object outside of our personal point of view.

Truth is not a matter of personal viewpoint.

Any person seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity.

To me horror is when I see somebody lying. I mean a person I know. A friend. And he's telling me something that I accept. And then suddenly as he or she is telling it there's something that gives them away. They're not telling me the truth.

The truth is I had always wanted to be a comedian but I really didn't have that kind of personality and it's a terrifying thing to say.