Quotes about lies
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“Book! You lie there; the fact is, you books must know your places. You'll do to give us the bare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale

Books

“It's strange indeed how memories can lie dormant in a man's mind for so many years. Yet those memories can be awakened and brought forth fresh and new, just by something you've seen, or something you've heard, or the sight of an old familiar face.”

Wilson Rawls book Where the Red Fern Grows

Source: Where the Red Fern Grows

Memory

“This is a classic story of the friendship between humans and cats. Yes. I got in a lie right from the start!”

Hiro Mashima (1977) Japanese manga artist

Source: Fairy Tail, Vol. 1

Friendship, Cats

“Tell me Zach.” I don’t know if it was the wind or the adrenaline, but I shivered. “And don’t lie to me.”

Ally Carter Out of Sight, Out of Time

Source: Out of Sight, Out of Time

“Please don't lie to me, unless, you're sure I'll never find out the truth.”

Ashleigh Brilliant (1933) American author and cartoonist

Truth

“And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

On Shakespeare (1630)
Source: The Complete Poetry

“Your success and happiness lie in you.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Happiness, Success, Success

“But they can't know how the dark space inside me is growing. I lie to them. I can't get out of the dark hole. 'Peace is here' it whispers.”

Lurlene McDaniel (1944) American writer

Source: Breathless

Peace

“Mr Churchill, to what do you attribute your success in life?

Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down. And never sit down when you can lie down.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Variant: Mr.Churchill, to what do you attribute your success in life? Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down. And never sit down when you can lie down.

Life, Success

“Remember, any lie you are told, even deliberately, is often a more significant fact than a truth told in all sincerity.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Source: Under the Glacier

Truth, Sincerity

“Every lie is a poison; there are no harmless lies. Only the truth is safe. Only the truth gives me consolation - it is the one unbreakable diamond.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Truth

“What else should you be? Human beings didn't evolve brains in order to lie around on lakes. Killing's the first thing we learned. And a good thing we did, or we'd be dead, and the tigers would own the earth.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Learning, Dead

“She shrieks above the din. "If you wish a battle, I shall give it. I am the last of my kind. I shall not lie down without a fight.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

Fight

“He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: A Clean Well Lighted Place

Sleep

“If you will lie about the little things, before long you’ll lie about bigger things.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

“What difference does it make if the Gospel is mostly a lie? It's an engrossing story and the words of its hero are excellent words to live by, even today.”

Tom Robbins (1932) American writer

“You may lie.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

The Giver

“You know how sometimes you lie in bed at night and think, “What if the law of gravity just wears out and lets go and I drift into space?” Does that ever make you anxious?”

Elaine May (1932) American screenwriter, film director, actress, and comedian

Law, Thinking, Night

“Justice. I've heard that word. I tried it out. I wrote it down. I wrote it down several times and always it looked like a damn cold lie to me. There is no justice.”

Jean Rhys book Wide Sargasso Sea

Source: Wide Sargasso Sea

Justice, Time

“Do anything, save to lie down and die!”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter

“I know a lie when I hear one.”

Adrian Mitchell (1932–2008) British writer

“I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

“Abe shook his head, and now the smile was gone altogether. "That's not the reason either. Don't lie to me little girl."
I felt my hackles going up. "And don't interrogate me, old man.”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

Smile, Girl

“Don’t lie. You know you like to view but not to buy. I have found that I am not a space where people want to live, at least not without decorating first. And that is the stubbornness in me: I do not want to be someone’s little home.”

Jeanette Winterson book Gut Symmetries

Source: Gut Symmetries

People, Home

“The great corporation which employed you lied to you, and lied to the whole country—from top to bottom it was nothing but one gigantic lie.”

Upton Sinclair book The Jungle

Source: The Jungle

Country

“Wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Love, Truth, Spring, Memory

“A part of me was hoping someone would wake up and hear, so I wouldn't have to live with this lie anymore. But no one woke up and in the silence that followed, I understood the nature of my new curse: I was going to get away with it.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner

Hope, Nature, Silence, Parting

“It sounds silly I know. But for me, the power of music rests in its ability to reach inside and touch the places where the deepest cuts lie. Like a benevolent god, a good song will never let you down.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

God, Music

“Time-travelers lie a lot.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

11/22/63

Travel, Time

“I knew that I couldn't lie beside her, without wanting to touch her. I couldn't have felt her breath come upon my mouth, without wanting to kiss her. And I couldn't have kissed her, without wanting to save her.”

Sarah Waters (1966) novelist

Kiss

“Life is more or less a lie, but then again, that's exactly the way we want it to be.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Life, Way

“Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You'd have a chance at least. You could lie there thinking: Well, at least I'm not dead.”

Tom Stoppard book Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Source: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Life, Thinking, Chance, Dead

“Every edit is a lie.”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

“For as long as the world spins and the earth is green with new wood, she will lie in this box and not in my arms.”

Lurlene McDaniel book Hit and Run

Source: Hit and Run

World, Box

“I really worry about these political people that have no personal life. If there's nothing that's lovely, and if there's nothing that's just ephemeral, that you can just lie on the floor and bust a gut laughing at, then what's the point?”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Love, Life, People, Personality

“Each night I lie down in a graveyard of memories. Moonlight spins a shroud about me.”

Jerry Spinelli book Love, Stargirl

Variant: Each night I lie down in a graveyard of memories.
Source: Love, Stargirl

Memory, Night

“The more you try to simplify things the more you complicate them. You create rules, build walls, push people away, lie to yourself and ignore true feelings. That is not simplifying things.”

Cecelia Ahern book If You Could See Me Now

Source: If You Could See Me Now

People, Feeling

“And that phrase - 'sleeping like a baby.' Some blonde said it blithely on the subway the other day. I wanted to lie down next to her and scream for five hours in her ear.”

Jenny Offill book Dept. of Speculation

Source: Dept. of Speculation

Sleep, Baby

“There are kinds of action, for good or ill, that lie so far outside the boundaries of normal behavior that they force us, in acknowledging that they have occurred, to restructure our own understanding of reality. We have to make room for them.”

Guy Gavriel Kay book The Summer Tree

Source: The Summer Tree

Behavior, Understanding, Reality

“If what he said was the truth, it broke her heart. If what he said was a lie, it was broken anyway.”

Christine Feehan American writer

Source: Oceans of Fire

Truth, Heart

“Immodest creature, you do not want a woman who will accept your faults, you want the one who pretends you are faultless – one who will caress the hand that strikes her and kiss the lips that lie to her.”

George Sand (1804–1876) French novelist and memoirist; pseudonym of Lucile Aurore Dupin

Mais, fat impudent, tu ne veux pas qu'on te pardonne, tu veux qu'on croie ou qu'on prétende n'avoir rien à te pardonner. Tu veux qu'on baise la main qui frappe et la bouche qui ment.
Source: Letter (17 June 1837) in The Intimate Journal of George Sand (1929) translated and edited by Marie Jenney Howe; also quoted in The Quotable Woman, 1800-1975 (1978) by Elaine Partnow

Kiss