“But if there was embellishment, it only had to do with the facts.”

“..it sounded very good and very false at the same time, so that you had the feeling that even if was true, he was touching only on the very highest points and maybe embellishing those a little.”

“...he had long decided that abundant laughter should be the embellishment of the remainder of his days.”

“I am fond of history and am very well contented to take the false with the true. In the principal facts they have sources of intelligence in former histories and records, which may be as much depended on, I conclude, as anything that does not actually pass under ones own observation; and as for the little embellishments you speak of, they are embellishments, and I like them as such.”

“Bird, don't sound so crushed. The fact that I had never had sex before can only have been significant for me, if it had any meaning at all-it had nothing to do with you.”

“Old stories have a habit of being told and retold and changed. Each subsequent storyteller puts his or her mark upon it. Whatever truth the story once had is buried in bias and embellishment. The reasons do not matter as much as the story itself.”