“I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.”

“Story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.”

“A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written.”

“A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.”

“You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let's say, and afterward you ask, 'Is it true?' and if the answer matters, you've got your answer . . . Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.”

“It wasn't a question of deceit. Just the opposite; he wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt.”

“By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain.”