While reading about Ernest Hemingway's coverage of war, I found this quote from "Papa": 

"The writer's standard of fidelity to the truth should be so high that his invention, out of his experience, should produce a truer account than anything factual can be.  For facts can be observed badly; but when a good writer is creating something, he has time and scope to make of it an absolute truth."  (source:  Hemingway on War and Its Aftermath, National Archives)