truth
Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.
Other People’s Money: and How the Bankers Use It (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1914), 92.
This struggle to live by my own truth is so difficult, so wearing. A terrible algebra, always.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin Vol. 1 1931–1934 (New York: The Swallow Press, 1966), 359.
I’d like somebody to write a book that really told the truth about life now. Leo Tolstoy but with drive-through windows.
“Nicholson Baker: By the Book,” The New York Times, September 13, 2012.
I refuse to lie to children. I refuse to cater to the bullshit of innocence.
“Maurice Sendak: ‘I refuse to lie to children,'” Guardian, October 2, 2011.
Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.
Billy Budd and Other Tales (Signet Classics, 1998), revised ed., 85.
I’m sorry, I’ve never been a fan of books. I don’t trust them. They’re all fact, no heart. I mean, they’re elitist, telling us what is or isn’t true or what did or didn’t happen. Who’s Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was built in 1914? If I want to say it was built in 1941, that’s my right as an American! I’m with the President. Let history decide what did or did not happen.
White House Correspondents’ Dinner, 2006
That’s where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. Now, I know some of you are going to say, “I did look it up, and that’s not true.” That’s ’cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut. I did. My gut tells me that’s how our nervous system works.
White House Correspondents’ Dinner, 2006
There’s a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.
The Paris Review Interviews, vol. I (New York: Picador, 2006), 9.