Lying for lying’s sake is the inspiration behind all great art

Bella threw a knife at my head.” He’d do better with the next lie.

The real history of consciousness starts with one’s first lie.

But you can’t make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can’t last.

At first I did not love you, Jude; that I own. When I first knew you I merely wanted you to love me. I did not exactly flirt with you; but that inborn craving which...

There are three types of lies — lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Never hide things from hardcore thinkers. They get more aggravated, more provoked by confusion than the most painful truths.

Resorting to lying or cheating in any competition amounts to conceding defeat.

I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful. If I’m on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I’m going, I’m liable...

For a man who walks in the light, to stay humble is not to walk in the dark; you don’t need to project yourself to be thought an honest man.

There is beauty in truth, even if it’s painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen...

Of course, the liar often imagines that he does no harm as long as his lies go undetected.

Many common lies and hypocrisies are like that, just out of the harmony of the moment.

Don’t forget that we lawyers, we’re a higher breed of intellect, and so it’s our privilege to lie. It’s as clear as day. Animals can’t even imagine lying: if you were to find yourself among...

One lie has the power to tarnish a thousand truths.

Lying didn’t feel good; it just felt familiar.

We assume that all statements must be mild inversions of the truth, because it’s too weird to imagine people who aren’t casually lying, pretty much all the time.

Not telling everything you know is not the same as telling a lie.

[W]hat is one to say of the writer who lies when he writes that he is lying?

Lying is second nature and I do it very well. Titus Ray, Chapter 5

Were you lying?””I never lie,” he said piously. “About what?””The sand, the snake.”For a young man who never lied, he seemed surprisingly unoffended by the question.

Ô, wine!, the truth-serum so potent that all those who wish to live happy lives should abstain from drinking it entirely!… except of course when they are alone.

Children wear their natures like brightly-colored clothes; that’s why they lie so transparently. Adulthood is the art of deceit.

The worst part was that I had things I wanted to tell my mother, too many to count, but none of them would go down so easy. She’d been through too much, between my siters-I...

All fathers are liars . . . If you want to be a father, you have to be prepared to become a liar.

Lies are like paper-Mache in a rain storm.

The truly scary thing about undiscovered lies is that they have a greater capacity to diminish us than exposed ones.

We accept too damned many things on the explanations of people who could have good reasons for lying.

Why are you lying to me? I’m so tired of people lying to me. Do I not deserve the truth? Do I look like someone who can’t handle it?

In your novels do you lie deliberately or just out of ignorance?”Laughter. A murmur of approval. The writer hesitated a few seconds. Then counter-attacked:”I’m a liar by vocation,” he shouted. “I lie with joy! Literature...

You can lie in any language on earth, and body language is no exception.

The truth is often a big, scary wall, no less massive and haunting even after you find a way around it.

Fiction may be about lying – on the surface, anyway – but fiction is about hiding the truth behind those lies. It’s about using those lies to say something true and real. It’s about showing...

Actually,” said Jace, “I prefer to think that I’m a liar in a way that’s uniquely my own.

Tension, in the long run, is a more dangerous force than any feud known to man.

His lies were so exquisite I almost wept.

Meg invited me to come again, but I always had reasons why I couldn’t: my schedule was busy, bus fare wasn’t cheap. Both of which were true, even if they weren’t the truth.

I am a trained professional liar. Do not read me as a textbook.

A man can do what he ought to do; and when he says he cannot, it is because he will not.

False encouragement is a kind of theft: it steals time, energy, and motivation a person could put toward some other purpose.

I lied,” I said. …”I know it,” he said.”Then do something about it. Do anything, just so it’s something.””I cant,” he said.”There aint anything to do? Not anything?””I didn’t say that,” Grandfather said. “I said...

Cruel’, O’Kelly laughed, ‘it’s cruel to tell children the truth. If anything convinces me of God’s mercy, then it’s his gift of making us unable to lie.

People, in general, tend to project onto others their own state of mind. Well-meaning people inevitably assume other people are well meaning. People who cheat assume everyone cheats. People who deceive assume everybody deceives.Confessions of...

There was a distinction between lying and telling half-truths, but it was a very narrow one.

Perhaps I really was disillusioned; unable to see myself for who, and what, I really was. Maybe I really was an ungrateful wretch who just refused to take responsibility for my own actions. Maybe I...

CREEPOther people have written about war. About how one plane sweeps over and the whole place is ablaze in minutes. About how a young man may kill another young many with perfect legality. I prefer...

Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.

Lying is essential to humanity. It plays as large a part perhaps as the quest for pleasure, and is moreover governed by that quest. One lies in order to protect one’s pleasure, or one’s honour...

Because I withered under the glare of an actual invitation, I was a firm believer in preventive prevarication–in other words, lying early in order to free myself later on.

There’s a very thin difference between lying and breaking the promise.