"What a word is truth. Slippery, tricky, unreliable. I tried in these books to tell the truth"

This quote by Lillian Hellman talks to the difficulty of conveying reality in words. She acknowledges that truth is a slippery concept, which it can be challenging and undependable. She is revealing her own trouble in trying to inform the reality in her books. She is suggesting that reality is a challenging thing to catch in words, which it is a difficulty to convey it properly. This quote speaks with the power of words, and how they can be utilized to communicate truth, however also how they can be utilized to misshape it. It is a pointer that fact is a complex concept, and that it is not always simple to record it in words. It is a reminder to be mindful of the power of words, and to be mindful in how we use them.