truth is stranger than fiction

English

Alternative forms

Etymology

Attributed to Lord Byron.[1][2]

Proverb

truth is stranger than fiction

  1. Sometimes actual events are stranger than imagined ones.
    • 1989, B. A. Ramsbottom, Stranger Than Fiction: The Life of William Kiffin, Gospel Standard Publications (→ISBN), page 7:
      It has often been said that truth is stranger than fiction. But what writer of the most extravagant fiction could have thought up such a life as that of William Kiffin? A poor orphan becoming one of the wealthiest merchants in the country; […]
    • 2003, Nicholas Rescher, Imagining Irreality: A Study of Unreal Possibilities, Open Court Publishing (→ISBN), page 239:
      In the end, truth is stranger than fiction: reality has more complications, more unanticipable twists and turns than fiction could ever imagine.

References
  1. “Truth is stranger than fiction” in Gary Martin, The Phrase Finder, 1997–.
  2. Lord Byron (1824), “Canto the Fourteenth, stanza CI”, in Don Juan (in English): “'T is strange -- but true; for truth is always strange; / Stranger than fiction; if it could be told, / How much would novels gain by the exchange!”
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