There is nothing so powerful as truth,—and often nothing so strange.

Accuracy wins over time because it needs no maintenance; it stays true whether or not anyone is managing it. The forgotten half is that what actually happened is usually less tidy than any story about it. Real explanations tend to include coincidence, mixed motives, and details that make no narrative sense. If your account of a situation is perfectly neat, it is probably not finished.

When you find something strange in a set of facts, resist smoothing it away. The oddity is usually where the real explanation is hiding. Say the awkward accurate version rather than the elegant approximate one.