Quotes about lies
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“In the immemorial style of young men under pressure, they decided to lie down for a while and waste time.”

Michael Chabon book The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Source: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

“The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speaks he lies.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Truth, Art, Dependency

“After all this kind of fanfare, and even more, I came to a point where I needed solitude and to just stop the machine of 'thinking' and 'enjoying' what they call 'living,' I just wanted to lie in the grass and look at the clouds…”

Jack Kerouac book Lonesome Traveler

Variant: I came to a point where I needed solitude and just stop the machine of ‘thinking’ and ‘enjoying’ what they call ‘living’, I just wanted to lie in the grass and look at the clouds.
Source: Lonesome Traveler

Thinking, Solitude, Grass

“He's the kind of liar who totally forgets what he told you the last time, but he believes every single lie with such conviction that sometimes he can convince you of it.”

Holly Black book White Cat

Source: White Cat

Time, Forgetting

“Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.”

Robert Creeley (1926–2005) American poet

Love, Happiness, Indifference

“Am I a man? To want you so badly that nothing else matters? To see you, and know I would sacrifice honor or family or life itself to lie wi' you, even though ye'd left me?”

Diana Gabaldon book Voyager

Source: Voyager

Life, Family

“There's a word for that kind of lie. Hope.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

Hope

“Syn has a brain disorder that causes him to lie most of the time. Ignore him. (Nykyrian)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of the Night

Time

“Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. Just lie down.”

Natalie Goldberg (1948) American writer

Forgetting

“one pierced moment whiter than the rest

-turning from the tremendous lie of sleep
i watch the roses of the day grow deep.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Sleep

“Not much touches us, but we long to be touched. We lie awake at night willing the darkness to part and show us a vision.”

Jeanette Winterson book The Passion

Source: The Passion

Parting, Night

“Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

As quoted in Why Men Fall Out of Love : The Secrets They Don't Tell (2005) by Michael French, p. 142
Disputed

“I won’t lie to you—it was hilarious. Yes, we were in trouble, yes, this was a disaster, and so one and so forth, but I have to say, seeing those upturned faces, the looks, was bout the best thing that happened to us since we’d come to New York.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

“… when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Truth

“I just can't. I'm married. I made my bed and now I have to lie in it.”

Sara Gruen book Water for Elephants

Source: Water for Elephants

“What is too absurd to believe is believed because it is too absurd to be a lie.”

Robert Jordan Lord of Chaos

Sebban Balwer
(15 October 1994)
Source: Lord of Chaos

“I'm not an angel, Jace," she repeated. "I don't return library books. I steal illegal music off the internet. I lie to my mom. I am.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Books, Music, Angels, Moms

“Lie until even you believe it - that's the real secret of lying”

Holly Black book White Cat

Source: White Cat

Secret, Lying

“Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

Truth

“Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully.”

Graham Greene book Travels with My Aunt

Travels with My Aunt (1969)

Truth

“At the foundation of moral thinking lie beliefs in statements the truth of which no further reason can be given.”

Alasdair MacIntyre (1929) Scottish philosopher

Source: After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory

Truth, Thinking

“For we are like tree trunks in the snow. In appearance they lie smoothly and a little push should be enough to set them rolling. No, it can't be done, for they are firmly wedded to the ground. But see, even that is only appearance.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Tree, Wedding, Appearance

“One creature's truth is another's lie. (Scroom of Strix Struma)”

Kathryn Lasky (1944) American children's writer

Source: The Outcast

Truth

“A lie twice believed is self decieved”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: A World Without Heroes

“I do not tell lies. Mother used to say that this was because I was a good person. But it is not because I am a good person. It is because I do not tell lie.”

Mark Haddon (1962) English writer and illustrator

Personality

“Hope and reality lie in inverse proportions, inside the walls of a hospital… Doubt is like dye. Once is spreads into the fabric of excuses you've woven, you'll never get rid of the stain.”

Jodi Picoult book Lone Wolf

Source: Lone Wolf

Hope, Reality

“It is always better to live the truth than to live a lie. And that lie would have kept him alone forever. He may have had nearly nothing for 5 years, but now he can have everything. A boy who looks like that… Magnus.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Truth, Boy

“It's always better to live the truth than to live a lie.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Truth

“I don't lie."
"You don't lie," I repeated.
"That's what I said."
"Ever."
"Nope."
Sure you don't, I thought.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

“You've got to lie to stay halfway interested in yourself.”

Barry Hannah (1942–2010) Short story writer, novelist, professor

“Don't lie about it. You made a mistake. Admit it and move on. Just don't do it again. Ever”

Anthony Bourdain book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Source: Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“I lie there and wait, and remind myself over and over that it doesn’t last forever. That there will be another day and after that, yet another day. One of those days, I’ll get up and eat breakfast and feel okay.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

Feeling, Waiting

“I've heard lots of people lie to themselves but they never fool anyone.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

People, Fools

“Sanity is a cozy lie.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

“Destiny is a lie. Destiny is justification for atrocity. It is the means by which murderers armour themselves against reprimand. It is a word intended to stand in place of ethics, denying all moral context.”

Steven Erikson book Midnight Tides

Source: Midnight Tides (2004)

“In the beginning, I was put off by the harshness of German. Someone would order a piece of cake, and it sounded as if it were an actual order, like, "Cut the cake and lie facedown in that ditch between the cobbler and the little girl."”

David Sedaris book Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

I'm guessing this comes from having watched too many Second World War movies.

Essay, "Easy, tiger". p.80
Source: Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls (2013)

Girl

“Then what are you like, Annabel?" he shot back. "A liar, like you told me that first day? Come on. That was the biggest lie of all.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen