Tis strange - but true; for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction; if it could be told,
How much would novels gain by the exchange!
How differently the world would men behold!
How oft would vice and virtue places change!
The new world would be nothing to the old,
If some Columbus of the moral seas
Would show mankind their souls' antipodes.

Tis strange - but true; for Truth is always strange,
Stranger than Fiction

For truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves.

The truth, however, was stranger still.

Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction ... for fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.

Truth may be stranger than fiction, goes the old saw, but it is never as strange as lies. (Or, for that matter, as true.)

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.

Strange reading? It is meant to be. The world is full of romantic, macabre, improbable things which would never do in works of fiction. When those that come within one man's notice are gathered together in a scrapbook, they tell of a world which sobersided folk may not choose to recognize as their own. But it is their own; I have the evidence.

Reality is much more absurd and complex than any fiction.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

... there's a great strangeness about love. ... Yes, I'm very sure that love is the strangest thing in the world—much stranger than death—or—or just life.

Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine - it is stranger than we can imagine.