QuoteProject
In Sri Lanka a well-told lie is worth a thousand facts.
Michael Ondaatje
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

A compelling story can hold more value than factual information.

This quote by Michael Ondaatje highlights the cultural significance of storytelling and the power of narrative over mere facts. In Sri Lankan society, the art of storytelling elevates perception and truth, suggesting that how something is conveyed can shape understanding and belief more profoundly than actual events or data. It emphasizes the notion that emotion and context often resonate louder than objective truth.

Themes

StorytellingTruthCulturePerceptionNarrative

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech discussing the impact of literature on society.

More from Michael Ondaatje

Don't we forgive everything of a lover? We forgive selfishness, desire, guile. As long as we are the motive for it...There are some European words you can never translate properly into another language.
Michael OndaatjeRead
When we are young we do not look into mirrors. It is when we are old, concerned with our name, our legend, what our lives will mean to the future. We become vain with the names we own, our claims to have been the first eyes, the strongest army, the cleverest merchant. It is when he is old that Narcissus wants a graven image of himself.
Michael OndaatjeRead
Water is the exile, carried back in cans and flasks, the ghost between your hands and your mouth.
Michael OndaatjeRead
You must talk to me, Caravaggio. Or am I just a book? Something to be read, some creature to be tempted out of a loch and shot full of morphine, full of corridors, lies, loose vegetation, pockets of stones.
Michael OndaatjeRead
You don't want to write your own opinion, you don't want to just represent yourself, but represent yourself through someone else.
Michael OndaatjeRead
A man in a desert can hold absence in his cupped hands, knowing it is something that feeds him more than water.
Michael OndaatjeRead

Similar quotes

Action without a name, a who attached to it, is meaningless.
Hannah ArendtRead
This awful concept of underclass is really horrifying. You're not lower class, you are excluded - outside.
Zygmunt BaumanRead
The author of the Gospel of Judas wasn't against martyrdom, and he didn't ever insult the martyrs. He said it's one thing to die for God if you have to do that. But it's another thing to say that's what God wants, that this is a glorification of God.
Elaine PagelsRead
Spirit is the vast stillness which is behind all created things.
Paramahansa YoganandaRead
The truth was much more beautiful.
Alejo CarpentierRead
The use of a mere dozen nuclear weapons ... would be a human catastrophe without parallel. ... Because so few weapons can kill so many people, even far-reaching disarmament proposals would leave us implicated in plans for unprecedented slaughter of innocent people. The sole measure that can free us from this burden is abolition.
Jonathan SchellRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.

Quote by Michael Ondaatje | QuoteProject