Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.

The aphorism frames fiction as an intentional fabrication (“the lie”) that can nonetheless disclose deeper realities about human experience (“the truth”). It points to the way invented plots and characters can illuminate moral, psychological, or social truths more directly than factual reporting, because art can distill, exaggerate, and reconfigure life to make its patterns visible. Read in a Camusian key, it also resonates with the tension between appearance and reality: even in a world where ultimate meaning is not given, narrative can clarify what it feels like to live, choose, and suffer. The line thus defends imaginative literature as a vehicle for insight rather than deception.