Yup, that's true
I used to go to a dentist back home who was able to apply the anesthetics without pain -- to me, I mean, not him. His "secret" was to warm up the syringe, as well as skill in choosing the right spot (after the customary piece of cotton with surface anesthetics on the spot, of course). Worked every time, I could never tell when he had started or finished injecting the stuff.
Same goes for the tooth extraction stuff. A couple of years ago I had my four wisdom teeth removed, all in one go (now I have even less wisdom, haha, er...). A different dentist from the one above. It took exactly two hours from me sitting on the chair to getting up from it -- it only took that long because one of them broke, due to a cavity, and took a little longer to extract (about 30 min, I think). After all was so easily over, I asked about all the horror stories I had heard about wisdom tooth extraction, and how lucky I must have been, etc... The dentist, a real, specialized dental surgeon who only does that told me that the stories were due to bad dentists not knowing very well what they are doing. He said he could treat a cavity, for instance, but would probably be a bit lousy at it.
So there you go, choose well. :-)