Elie Wiesel Quotes

It's true that I don't rearrange that much in the fiction, but I feel if you change even one name or the order of one event then you have to call it fiction or you get all the credits of non-fiction without paying the price.

I'm very, very leery of nonfiction books where they change timeframes and use - what do they call those things? - composite characters. I don't think that's right.

There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.

I think it's fair to ask how truthful a film is as opposed to how factual it is.

You don't have to have a true story to make a true story movie.

Whenever Hollywood gets involved with real life events, certain liberties have to be taken.

When you make movies based on real life, you try to exaggerate it.

Historical truth and the marketing needs of the movie and television industry remain fundamentally incompatible.

Truth is quite constricting, in a way. You endlessly see at the start of a film 'This is a true story'.

When I write nonfiction, it's always absolutely true. There will be no moment in my nonfiction where I have made something up and have to apologize to the bullying hostess of a talk show.

I like documentaries because there's nothing to nitpick or criticize about scenes if they aren't just right. It's about honesty and real-life circumstances coming out. Granted it can be swayed by how people tell that story, but overall, I like it because it is true.

The novelist has a responsibility to adhere to the facts as closely as possible, and if they are inconvenient, that's where the art comes in. You must work with intractable facts and find the dramatic shape inside them.

I've read the 'Public Enemies' script and, no, it's not 100 percent historically accurate. But it's by far the closest thing to fact Hollywood has attempted, and for that, I am both excited and quietly relieved.

I always like when things are loosely based on real events. That always makes it more interesting because there's a lot of research you can do.

There’s dramatic license, which is necessary or nothing’s fun, and historical truth, which is necessary or nothing’s understood.

Every time you do a true story - and I've done a few - you have to look in the mirror and say, 'That's close enough. I'm comfortable with this.' You're always going to compress time; you're going to change the order of things. But I don't think you want to tell a big lie. You want to think that you're embracing the truth.

With fiction, you can do whatever you want to, but if you are making a film on someone, you have to stick to the truth. You cannot just say that I will change the climax because I do not like it.

When a novel is based on an actual crime, it should do much more than loosely fictionalize it. The novel must stand alone as a work of art that justifies using the story for its own purposes.

If a film is based on a true story and you don't use anyone's name, you can do what you like.

I've found that using historical material and being rooted in historical material is liberating because I always think to myself, 'Well, this actually happened, and this is fantastic!' That's why I don't like fantasy, in a way. Because it's sort of in emptiness.

I wanted to be as authentic as possible because, first of all, Jean Shrimpton is still alive. And, she's interesting enough to be played accurately. I didn't need to add things.

In nonfiction, you have that limitation, that constraint, of telling the truth.

There are people who are bound journalistically to a code of ethics that means they can't quote something that isn't sourced, whereas what I do is entirely unsourced. I effectively fictionalise history and yet somehow aim at a greater truth.

Working as a journalist, I was always tempted to lie. I felt I could do dialogue better than the person I was interviewing. I felt I could lie better than Nixon and be more concise than some random person I was covering.

Setting is the bedrock of your story. If you choose a real-world backdrop, be certain you get your facts straight.