Hemingway on Good Fiction

Apr 6

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and then afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and places and how the weather was.”. -Ernest Hemingway.

This has the ring of truth for me, but what exactly does he mean that good books are “truer than if they had really happened”?