“Yes, I know, it's not the truth, but in a great history little truths can be altered so that the greater truth emerges.”

“I must say a few words about memory. It is full of holes. If you were to lay it out upon a table, it would resemble a scrap of lace. I am a lover of history . . . [but] history has one flaw. It is a subjective art, no less so than poetry or music. . . . The historian writes a truth. The memoirist writes a truth. The novelist writes a truth. And so on. My mother, we both know, wrote a truth in The 19th Wife– a truth that corresponded to her memory and desires. It is not the truth, certainly not. But a truth, yes . . . Her book is a fact. It remains so, even if it is snowflaked with holes.”

“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.”

“You can recognize a small truth because its opposite is a falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is another truth.”

“History has its truth, and so has legend. Legendary truth is of another nature than historical truth. Legendary truth is invention whose result is reality. Furthermore, history and legend have the same goal; to depict eternal man beneath momentary man.”

“It is possible to know the great truths without feeling the truth of them.”