Well Said: Fiction is the lie that tells the truth

We writers -- and especially writers for children, but all writers -- have an obligation to our readers; it's the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were -- to understand that truth is not in what happens but in what it tells us about who we are. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.

Neil Gaiman in a talk about libraries