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

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

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“you can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth; if you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty. ”