Where does fiction end and reality begin?

Human beings not only can't bear too much reality, we flee from reality when someone doesn't force us close enough to the fire to feel the heat on our faces.

Appearances are not reality; but they often can be a convincing alternative to it. You can control appearances most of the time, but facts are what they are. When the facts are too sharp, you can craft a cheerful version of the situation and cover the facts the way that you can covered a battered old four-slice toaster with a knitted cozy featuring images of kittens.

The truth was stranger than the official fiction.

Literary fiction, as a strict genre, is all but dead. Meanwhile, most genres flourish.

We make so many of our own troubles, from mere mishaps to disasters, by dwelling on the possibility of them until the possible becomes inevitable.