Stranger Than Fiction Quotes

Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it. ~ H.L. Mencken

It's Will Ferrell, he does Will Ferrell movies. But if you really look at it, he tries to do something different with each one, whether it's an action cop movie like 'The Other Guys' or doing 'Talladega Nights' going into red state America or 'Casa de Mi Padre' or 'Stranger Than Fiction,' which is more of a drama. ~ Adam McKay

I love when truth is stranger than fiction. It authenticates my wild imagination. ~ Joseph DiFrancesco

I Don't Need the nicotene patch, Penny - I smoke cigarettes. ~ Emma Thompson

Truth is only stranger than fiction if you're a stranger to the truth. Which means you're either a liar or you're fictional. ~ Pseudonymous Bosch

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

Life, my dear Watson, is infinitely stranger than fiction; stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We could not conceive the things that are merely commonplace to existence. If we could hover over this great city, remove the roofs, and peep in at the things going on, it would make all fiction, with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions flat, stale and unprofitable. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

History is indeed stranger than fiction. The twists and turns of human history are too outlandish for to be believable in any work of fiction. ~ A.E. Samaan

It's true, reality really is stranger than fiction. ~ Anonymous

'Fargo' becomes a metaphor for a type of true crime case where truth is stranger than fiction. So, there's no reason that there isn't another 10-hour true crime story that could be told in this region. ~ Noah Hawley

As Harold took a bite of Bavarian Sugar cookie, he finally felt as if everything was going to be okay. Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy ... there are Bavarian Sugar cookies. And, fortunately, when there aren't any cookies we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin ... or a kind and loving gesture ... or a subtle encouragement ... or a loving embrace ... or an offer of comfort ...
And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties which we assume only accessorize our days, are in fact here for a much nobler and larger cause. They are here to save our lives. ~ Zach Helm

Truth is stranger than fiction because lies are much more convincing but the truth always comes out no matter how long it takes. ~ Sanjo Jendayi

Since truth is often stranger than fiction, fiction needs to be pretty weird. ~ Erik Meyer

The reason why truth is so much stranger than fiction is that there is no requirement for it to be consistent. ~ Mark Twain

Truth is much stranger than fiction and, often, much more powerful. ~ Mira Nair

Truth is more of a stranger than fiction. ~ Mark Twain

I've been fighting with Acorn, alongside Acorn, on issues you care about, my entire career. ~ Barack Obama

Truth is stranger than fiction... ~ Mark Twain

I've played drug dealers, all my life. I've made a career of killing people and playing all kinds of killers. The violence and drugs is portrayed in exaggeration. This is fiction. That is how I looked at it. And, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Just open a newspaper. ~ Benicio Del Toro

Truth is stranger than fiction," as the old saying goes. When I watch a documentary, I can't help crying and then I think to myself, "Fiction can't compete with this."
But when I mentioned this to a veteran manga artist friend of mine he said that "fiction brings salvation to characters in stories that would otherwise have no salvation at all."
His words strengthened the conviction of my manga spirit. ~ Hiromu Arakawa

Those who say truth is stranger than fiction have wasted their time on poorly written fiction. ~ Mark Twain

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. ~ Mark Twain

Truth is stranger than fiction, which is why reality TV is so popular. ~ Heather Dubrow

Truth may be stranger than fiction, but fiction is truer. ~ Frederic Raphael

As the saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction. But only when the reality has not been subsumed by foamy legends and fantasies that radiate outward from the actual event. ~ Brock Yates

Science to me is sufficiently weird and interesting, and stranger than fiction. ~ Leonard Susskind

You sit right next to me.
Still you don't seem close to me. ~ Shillpi S Banerrji

On 'Stranger Than Fiction,' the script was so good that I stuck to every line because it was just such brilliant writing from Zach Helm that I felt like I really just want to shoot the page. ~ Marc Forster

In death, as so often in life, truth is stranger than fiction." Why is life more unpredictable than a football game? ~ Joanna Eliot

Truth may be stranger than fiction, goes the old saw, but it is never as strange as lies. ~ John Hodgman

Rand, Huxley, Orwell, and Bradbury foresaw much of today's dystopian world: its spiritual and moral emptiness, its culture of consumerism, its flat-souled Last Manishness, its debasement of language, its doublethink, its illiteracy, and its bovine tolerance of authoritarian indignities. But they did not foresee the most serious and catastrophic of today's problems: the eminent destruction of whites, and western culture.

None of them thought to deal with race at all. Why is this? Probably for the simple reason that it never occurred to any of them that whites might take slave morality so far as to actually will their own destruction. As always, the truth is stranger than fiction. ~ Jef Costello

When it [truth] emerges it often bears out the saying that 'truth is stranger than fiction.' A novelist has to appear plausible, and would hesitate to make use of such astounding contradictions as occur in history through some extraordinary accident or twist of psychology . ~ Bill Vaughan

I think that truth is stranger than fiction, and it's nice to know the people you're making a movie about. ~ Julian Schnabel

The reason that truth is stranger than fiction is that fiction has to have a rational thread running through it in order to be believable, whereas reality may be totally irrational. ~ Sydney J. Harris

You need to understand that truth is stranger than fiction. Listen: people are willing to swallow any old tripe as long as you say it without flinching. They want to be told stuff. And they don't want to doubt you either. It's too hard. ~ Craig Silvey

Life isn't meant to be believable. It's meant to be magical. Haven't you heard? Truth is stranger than fiction. ~ Rebecca Serle

Reality is stranger than fiction. ~ Parag Pandit

Anyone who claims that truth is stranger than fiction has never gazed into a writer's mind, or read my stories. ~ Lucian Barnes

Many people have observed that truth is stranger than fiction. This has led some intellectuals to conclude that it's stranger than non-fiction as well. ~ Brad Holland

Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction; for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more interesting. ~ William Randolph

Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies. And, fortunately, when there aren't any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys and nose plugs, an uneaten Danish, soft-spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are effective for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange, but I also know that it just so happens to be true. ~ Zach Helm

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, but usually fiction is just better. ~ Jon Weisman

simply such
a day like the others, it isn't
on a day like this
the gypsy women are looking at you
and are knowing - if they call you
you will stop
to hear your misfortune
spoken by a stranger
they have a degree
in street's psychology
for them you are transparent
even if you don't have a light for their cigarette
she knows
you aren't lucky in love
buy me a coffee
and I'll tell you more

still more than this what then ~ Galina Nikolowa

I had a lot of ups and downs, more downs than ups, but I look at each downfall as a stepping stone and a lesson learned. ~ Charlena E. Jackson

I could talk more directly in a nonfiction voice than I could in fiction. ~ Joan Didion

As a child, I heard many warnings from teachers about the perils of talking with strangers. Yet now, fairly late in my life, I can think of not many things better than to talk with strangers. The idea of being a stranger is also very appealing. ~ Michael Leunig

I get tired of hearing some science-fiction fans saying that characterization isn't important in SF. In point of fact, I think it's probably more important in SF than in mainstream fiction. After all, if the author can't characterize humans well, he or she probably can't characterize aliens well either. ~ Robert J. Sawyer

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life. ~ Simone Weil

Truth usually makes no sense. If your desire is for everything to make perfect sense, then you should take refuge in fiction. In fiction, all threads tie together in a neat bow and everything moves smoothly from one point to the next to the next. In real life, though ... nothing makes sense. Bad things happen to good people. The pious die young while the wicked live until old age. War, famine, pestilence, death all occur randomly and senselessly and leave us more often than not scratching our heads and hurling the question 'why?' into a void that provides no answers. ~ Peter David

Fact is much more fascinating than fiction. ~ Deana J. Driver

Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps. ~ Ann Patchett

Antonio looked down, silent, as Shillitoni kept talking. There he was, among cold-blooded killers, talking to a gangster. A much different picture than a year prior.
"Can't trust priests, can't trust cops either. Can't trust nobody! Whaddaya say?"
"I am not like you," Antonio said. "I'm not like them, either. That's what I say. I am not a cold-blooded killer!"
"Ya killed, you a killa! There's not'ng more to it!" Shillitoni said. ~ Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini

To my way of thinking and working, the greatest service a piece of fiction can do any reader is to leave him with a higher ideal of life than he had when he began. If in one small degree it shows him where he can be ... gentler, saner, cleaner, kindlier ... it is a wonder-working book. If it opens his eyes to one beauty in nature he never saw for himself and leads him one step toward the God of the Universe, it is a beneficial book ... ~ Gene Stratton-Porter

Sometimes it's hard for me to understand that people can believe in me, that they can trust that I'll be anything more than the sum of the skeletons in my closet. But I can be. And I am. ~ Michael A. Martin & Andy Mangels

Careless and not particularly biting, it was easier to shrug off than anything in the first book which depicted me as an inarticulate zombie confused by the irony of Randy Newman's I Love L.A. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

More than fantasy or even science fiction, Ray Bradbury wrote horror, and like so many great horror writers he was himself utterly without fear, of anything. He wasn't afraid of looking uncool - he wasn't scared to openly love innocence, or to be optimistic, or to write sentimentally when he felt that way. ~ Lev Grossman

'Under the Skin' is handsome, in a dour way, but inert - a cunning experiment that died in the shooting or on the editing table. You'll want to get the DVD, though, and not just for its study of Scarlett. Odds are that the Making-Of documentary will be far stranger and more fascinating than the movie that was made. ~ Richard Corliss

But Holms had proven stalwart and valiant. When Miss Jones had shown up to discover them in the castle hallway, because she'd heard a suspicious noise and had feared for her schoolchums' safety, they' d had to bring her along. She'd wanted to run straight to the headmistress, of course, but Armand had persuaded her not to. How he regretted that decision now!
The duke had fired his guns at them all. They'd retreated, thought to go to the automobile to fetch a doctor and the sheriff, but they'd stumbled the wrong way and fallen down the slope to the beach instead. All three of them. And there, noble Jesse had died.
Fact. Fiction. Likely because so much of it had happened, and because Armand's red-eyed, stoic distress seemed so genuine, the adults around us had accepted it as truth.
Mostly.
I think if I hadn't been discovered wearing only Armand's coat as I knelt next to Jesse's body, Mrs. Westcliffe might have found the whole thing easier to swallow.
Yet the official version ruled the day. And here we all were basking in it, breathing fresh sea air, warmed by the generous spring sun. Burying a hero. A far, far greater hero than anyone standing around me at his funeral would ever suspect.
Somewhere in deep-blue briny waters, a U-boat rested, filled with live torpedoes and solid-gold men.
I thought I better understood Rue's letters now. I understood her warning about the pain that would come with my Gifts.
I understood my sacrifice. ~ Shana Abe

When I was small, I never wanted to step in puddles. Not because of any fear of drowned worms or wet stockings; I was by and large a grubby child, with a blissful disregard for filth of any kind.
It was because I couldn't bring myself believe that that perfect smooth expanse was no more than I thin film of water over solid earth. I believed it was an opening into some fathomless space. Sometimes, seeing the tiny ripples caused by my approach, I thought the puddle impossibly deep, a bottomless sea in which the lazy coil of a tentacle and gleam of scale lay hidden, with the threat of huge bodies and sharp teeth adrift and silent in the far-down depths.
And then, looking down into reflection, I would see my own round face and frizzled hair against a featureless blue sweep, and think instead that the puddle was the entrance to another sky. If I stepped in there, I would drop at once, and keep on falling, on and on, into blue space.
The only time I would dare walk though a puddle was at twilight, when the evening stars came out. If I looked in the water and saw one lighted pinprick there, I could slash through unafraid--for if I should fall into the puddle and on into space, I could grab hold of the star as I passed, and be safe.
Even now, when I see a puddle in my path, my mind half-halts--though my feet do not--then hurries on, with only the echo of the though left behind.
What if, this time, you fall? ~ Diana Gabaldon

The examinations had taken much longer than necessary because they were paying more attention to learning each other's bodies than searching for telltale symptoms of the virus. ~ Christine Feehan

How did they go from Braveheart to Brigadoon in less than five minutes? ~ Jennifer Silverwood

Science Fiction has always attracted more talented writers than it could reward adequately. ~ Walter M. Miller Jr.

Svensson has struggled as everyone struggles, he's conceded his defeats. He's not a player, but he has lost nonetheless. Svensson is no stranger than the rest of us. At some point he decided to stop playing the game, and turned to the tangible things: Svensson and the painter Kiki Kaufman have a daughter named Bella. Bella has two teeth (the research intern did a terrible job). Svensson and Kiki are turning a ruin into a house, they're turning a study into a nursery, they plant and harvest and breed animals and slaughter and cook. ~ Thomas Pletzinger

The wrongs of society can be more deeply impressed on a large class of readers in the form of fiction than by essays, sermons, or the facts of science. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The shadowy edge between normal and paranormal is more than ILLUSORY... ~ Sahara Sanders

I can't help what I have any more than you can help what you don't ~ Neal Shusterman

How sweet the morning air is! See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself over the London cloud-bank. It shines on a good many folk, but on none, I dare bet, who are on a stranger errand than you and I. How small we feel with our petty ambitions and strivings in the presence of the great elemental forces of Nature! ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Listen to others as if they are telling you the truth, ask questions when you aren't clear, and allow others the room to have different feelings than you. No more assigning hidden motives, prejudging and cutting people off before separating fact from fiction. ~ Rhonda Britten

Value' has no meaning other than in relation to living beings. The value of a thing is always relative to a particular person, is completely personal and different in quantity for each living human - 'market value' is a fiction, merely a rough guess at the average personal values, all of which must be quantitively different or trade would be impossible. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Know your territory was the first rule that had been drilled into her...and the first thing she'd done after establishing herself in Karrde's organization had been to do precisely that. She'd studied the aeriel maps of the forest and surrounding territory; had taken long walks, in both daylight and at night, to familiarize herself with the sights and sounds; had sought out and killed several vornskrs and other predators to learn the fastest ways of taking them down; had even talked one of Karrde's people into running bio tests on a crateload of native plants to find out which were edible and which weren't. Outside the forest, she knew something about the settlers, understood the local politics, and had stashed a small but adequate part of her earnings out where she could get hold of it. [p] More than anyone in Karrde's organization, she was equipped to survive outside the confines of his encampment. So why was she trying so hard to get back there?" - Heir to the Empire p 270-271 re: Mara Jade ~ Timothy Zahn

Each day when you see us black folk upon the dusty land of your farm or upon the hard pavement of your city streets, you usually take it for granted and think you know us, but our history is far stranger than you suspect, and we are not what we seem. ~ Richard Wright

I don't know what issues concerning identity have helped contemporary fiction evolve to what it is now. All I know is that the range of voices that are being heard and published is a lot more diverse than when I was coming up. ~ Jessica Hagedorn

Nothing is a greater stranger to my breast, or a sin that my soul more abhors, than that black and detestable one, ingratitude. ~ George Washington

I think we're going to care more about Americans than Africans. I don't think that's ever going to go away, and I don't think it's ever going to go away that people care more about their families than strangers, and their communities over other communities. But I think it would transform the world in such a good way if we could just acknowledge, at least intellectually, that an African life and an American life are the same. ~ Paul Bloom

Finally they reached the Colosseum, where a dozen guys in cheap gladiator costumes were scuffling with the police - plastic swords versus batons. Percy wasn't sure what that was about, but he and Annabeth decided to keep walking. Sometimes mortals were even stranger than monsters. ~ Rick Riordan

The kentish week-enders on their way to church were appalled by the sight of four great hounds in full cry after two little girls. My uncle seemed to them like a wicked lord of fiction, and I became more than ever surrounded with an aura of madness, badness, and dangerousness for their children to know. ~ Nancy Mitford

Don't discount intuition. It holds more wisdom than technology can ever afford ~ Jack C. Monroe

If realistic fiction is primarily metonymic, fantasy is inescapably metaphoric; because the presence of the impossible blocks a literal reading, we are invited to look at Fred and his world as some sort of iconic stand-in for everyday life, rather than as an extension from it. By ~ Brian Attebery

The point of stories is not that they are objectively true, but that the soul of the story is truer than reality. Those who mock fiction do so because they fear the truth.
-Cordelia Carstairs ~ Cassandra Clare

You can gain more friends by being yourself than you can by putting up a front. You can gain more friends by building people up than you can by tearing them down. And you can gain more friends by taking a few minutes from each day to do something kind for someone, whether it be a friend or a complete stranger. What a difference one person can make! ~ Sasha Azevedo

There is no law stronger than that of
magic. - Kian ~ Kailin Gow

A plot, I used to remind my students, is not merely a sequence of events: "A" followed by "B" followed by "C" followed by "D." Rather, it's a series of events linked by cause and effect: "A" causes "B," which causes "C," and so on. True, a person's (or a fictional character's) destiny may be more than the sum of his choices
fate and luck play a role as well
but only scientists (and not all of them) believe that free will is a sham. People in life
and therefore in fiction
must choose, and their choices must have meaningful consequences. Otherwise, there's no story. ~ Richard Russo

Brother Cavil:

In all your travels, have you ever seen a star go supernova? ...

I have. I saw a star explode and send out the building blocks of the Universe. Other stars, other planets and eventually other life. A supernova! Creation itself! I was there. I wanted to see it and be part of the moment. And you know how I perceived one of the most glorious events in the universe? With these ridiculous gelatinous orbs in my skull! With eyes designed to perceive only a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum. With ears designed only to hear vibrations in the air. ...

I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to - I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have to - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws! And feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me! I'm a machine! And I can know much more! I can experience so much more. But I'm trapped in this absurd body! And why? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way! ~ Ronald D. Moore

Wisdom from a stranger is better than ignorance from a friend ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

I'd rather hang out with five people that I love than with 400 strangers at a club who are all doing the up-and-down inspection thing. They appraise everybody from head to toe - the outfit, the handbag, the shoes, how much they weigh ... I can't stand it! ~ Sophia Bush

Any woman who wishes to be an intellectual, to write non-fiction, to deal with theory, faces a lot of discrimination coming her way and perhaps even self-doubt because there aren't that many who've gone before you. And I think that the most powerful tool we can have is to be clear about our intent. To know what it is we want to do rather than going into institutions thinking that the institution is going to frame for us. ~ Bell Hooks

[Psi waves travel far and wide
Faster than the speed of light
Limitless is their domain
Time does not their rate detain.] ~ Marcha A. Fox

Wow, you're quite a handful. You sure your parents didn't deliberately ship you off on that escape pod?'
Much to his surprise, rather than a sarcastic retort his little charge locked huge, brown eyes on his like a frightened doe in the sights of his 30.06 and bit her lip as her eyes filled with tears.
And at that very moment the term 'disarming' took on a whole new meaning and Jenkins knew he was toast. ~ Marcha A. Fox

I wanted to be a writer, but at the time, I spent my days working a retail job, my nights sleeping in my childhood bedroom, and while I had written short stories here and there, I didn't know how to write good fiction anymore than I knew how to perform good brain surgery. ~ Anthony Marra

My Father always said 'Man can sooner reconcile the galaxy than two women! ~ J.J. Snow