Logo - Feel The Words

Telling The Truth Quotes

Honesty across memoir and fiction

These telling the truth quotes contrast memoir and fiction, noting readers often want to catch memoirists lying and novelists secretly practicing Honesty.

When it comes to memoir, we want to catch the author in a lie. When we read fiction, we want to catch the author telling the truth.

Quotes by Tayari Jones

Autobiography is an unrivaled vehicle for telling the truth about other people.

Quotes by Philip Guedalla

In nonfiction, you have that limitation, that constraint, of telling the truth.

Quotes by Peter Matthiessen

The English are polite by telling lies. The Americans are polite by telling the truth.

Quotes by Malcolm Bradbury

Emotion Quotes

This is me telling the truth. It just so happens to be a very explosive truth.

Quotes by Corey Clark

No blame should attach to telling the truth. But it does, it does.

Quotes by Anita Brookner

Frequently Asked Questions

How do these quotes compare memoir and fiction?
One draws a sharp contrast: readers of memoir look for a hidden lie, while readers of fiction secretly hope to catch the author telling the truth.
Is honesty described differently across cultures here?
Yes, one quote jokes that the English stay polite by telling lies while Americans stay polite by telling the truth, poking fun at cultural manners.
What does one quote say about autobiography?
It calls autobiography an unmatched way of telling the truth about other people, not just the author, since every memoir inevitably involves those around the writer.
Is nonfiction treated as harder to write?
One quote suggests it is, describing the limitation of staying factual in nonfiction as a real constraint compared to the freedom fiction allows, shaping the writer's own Identity on the page.
What's the overall theme tying these quotes together?
All five wrestle with where real honesty lives in writing, whether that's memoir, fiction, or nonfiction, rather than assuming truth only belongs to one form.

Others focus on nonfiction, describing the discipline of Expression under the constraint of staying strictly factual.