Writers Are Liars

“Writers are liars. They are liars unless they live the truths they write about, and only then. Life is not talking or writing, but living. Life is doing. So any truth that may be spoken of, or reduced to written forms, must have a lived counterpart … otherwise it is not a truth, it is something else, something not alive but dead. So the realisation that writers are liars and that writing is lying is, for a writer aiming to write the truth, nearly impossible to live with. After this enlightenment there remain for him only two choices and one evasion. The choices are to adjust his life so that it conforms to what he has written, or else to die. The evasion is to lapse back into unawareness as black and bleak as a starless sky at night.” (Christopher Ross, Mishima’s Sword)