Quotes & Sayings About Telling A Lie

The doctor begins to lose freedoms; it's like telling a lie, and one leads to another. First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then the doctors aren't equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him you can't live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go someplace else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go. — Ronald Reagan

She wanted to have him hold her and tell her all the demons were pretend, that there was no monster in her closet, that everything would be okay. But that was a lie. The demon was in her head, telling her she was too fat. She had to get the demon out. But she couldn't do it by herself. — Jackie Morse Kessler

Telling ourselves that fiction is in a sense true and at the same time not true is essential to the art of fiction. It's been at the heart of fiction from the start. Fiction offers both truth, and we know it's a flat-out lie. Sometimes it drives a novelist mad. Sometimes it energizes us. — Joanna Scott

I would lie of course. I lied a lot and with good reason: to protect the truth - safeguard it like wearing fake gems to keep the real ones from getting stolen or cheapened by overuse. I guarded what truths I possessed because information was not a thing - it was colorless odorless shapeless and therefore indestructible. There was no way to retrieve or void it no way to halt its proliferation. Telling someone a secret was like storing plutonium inside a sandwich bag the information would inevitably outlive the friendship or love or trust in which you'd placed it. And then you would have given it away. — Jennifer Egan

Don't be afraid. My telling can't hurt you in spite of what I have done and I promise to lie quietly in the dark - weeping perhaps or occasionally seeing the blood once more - but I will never again unfold my limbs to rise up and bare teeth. I explain. You can think what I tell you a confession, if you like, but one full of curiosities familiar only in dreams and during those moments when a dog's profile plays in the steam of a kettle. Or when a corn-husk doll sitting on a shelf is soon splaying in the corner of a room and the wicked of how it got there is plain. Stranger things happen all the time everywhere. You know. I know you know. One question is who is responsible? Another is can you read? — Toni Morrison

Either we're a team or we aren't. Either you trust me or you don't." Hale took a step toward her. "What's it going to be, Kat?"
It is an occupational hazard that anyone who has spent her life learning how to lie eventually becomes bad at telling the truth; in that moment Kat didn't have a clue what to say. I carn't do this with out you sounded trite. What they were doing was to big for a simple please.
Hale I-"
You know what? Never mind. Either way, I'm in Kat." He seemed utterly resloved as he slipped on his sunglasses. "I'm all in — Ally Carter

It's not enough to be able to lie with a straight face; anybody with enough gall to raise on a busted flush can do that. The first way to lie artistically is to tell the truth - but not all of it. The second way involves telling the truth, too, but is harder: Tell the exact truth and maybe all of it ... but tell it so unconvincingly that your listener is sure you are lying. — Robert A. Heinlein

When an orphan is depressed," wrote Wilbur Larch, "he is attracted to telling lies. A lie is at least a vigorous enterprise, it keeps you on your toes by making you suddenly responsible for what happens because of it. You must be alert to lie, and stay alert to keep your lie a secret. Orphans are not the masters of their fates; they are the last to believe you if you tell them that other people are also not in charge of theirs. When you lie, it makes you feel in charge of your life. Telling lies is very seductive to orphans. I know," Dr. Larch wrote. "I know because I tell them, too. I love to lie. When you lie, you feel as if you have cheated fate
your own, and everybody else's. — John Irving

It takes extraordinary mental discipline to transmit human experience without perversion. Truth telling is unnatural. Lying is an important aspect of humanity. We lie to other people to prevent hurt feelings and we deceive ourselves in order to protect our noble sense of being a good person. Dishonesty and inaccuracy preserves our quest seeking uninterrupted personal pleasure. I shall eschew pleasure seeking and cultivate precision of mind and moral character that precious truth telling necessitates. Reading and writing, along with observing nature and studious reflection on vivid personal experiences is the process methodology that will bring me closest to discovering inviolate verity of existence and becoming a doyen for all the immaculate truth, beauty, and goodness in this world. — Kilroy J. Oldster

He wouldn't try to make her feel better about something if it meant telling her a lie. — Luanne Rice

First and foremost, telling historical stories is very tricky because it is something that is known. It is not like you can tell a lie or change something that is written in black and white. — Anthony Hemingway

Telling the truth and making someone cry is better than telling a lie and making someone smile. — Paulo Coelho

Also, Willie, I dig telling the truth. Words can be twisted but a photo never lies.
Sutton laughs.
What's funny? Photographer says.
Nothing. Except - that's pure horseshit kid. I can't think of anything that lies more than a photo. In fact every photo is a dirty stinking lie because it's a frozen moment - and time can't be frozen. Some of the biggest lies I've ever run across have been photos. Some of them were of me. — J.R. Moehringer

Honor was never taking the easy way when it was also the wrong one. Never telling a falsehood unless the truth was painful and unnecessary, or a lie was necessary to save others. Never manipulating the truth to serve only yourself. Protecting the weak and helpless; standing fast even when fear made you weak. Keeping your word. — Mercedes Lackey

I don't ever want to be caught up in a system of thinking I can do one thing 'cos that's just ... that's just telling yourself a lie. — Frank Ocean

We lie with our faces because that's what we've been taught to do since early childhood. "Don't make that face," our parents growl when we honestly react to the food placed in front of us. "At least look happy when your cousins stop by," they instruct, and you learn to force a smile. Our parents - and society - are, in essence, telling us to hide, deceive, and lie with our faces for the sake of social harmony. So it is no surprise that we tend to get pretty good at it, so good, in fact, that when we put on a happy face at a family gathering, we might look as if we love our in-laws when, in reality, we are fantasizing about how to hasten their departure. — Joe Navarro

When I was much younger and lived in Claybourne's residence, Luke's
grandfather arranged an afternoon tea in the garden with a few of the
girls my age. They arrived in coaches and carriages and they were so
beautiful. Their laughter was soft and sweet, so very different from the
harsh laugher in the rookeries. I thought, 'Oh my goodness, I'm going to
be like them.'
"They hurt me that day without touching me. They taught me that
words can slice like a knife. They wanted to know about life in the
rookeries, and I made the mistake of telling them that I slept with Luke
and Jack and Jim. And sometimes at night, I still slept with Luke. They
made it into something ugly. It was really rather innocent. To lie in the
circle of someone's arms while you sleep can be very, very nice. But I
never slept with them again. Never told them why. Those girls took that
from me. And I let them. — Lorraine Heath

And came to her a realization that the largest humiliation for the person was a lie. And the viler the one to whom you lie, the greater is the humiliation. — Osyp Nazaruk

[On Richard M. Nixon:] Americans began with a president who couldn't tell a lie and now they have one who can't tell the truth. — Benazir Bhutto

It was the most important moment in human history, the telling of the first lie. That's what separates us from the other animals. It has nothing to do with humans thinking on a higher plane or having easily available credit. We lie to each other. We deliberately mislead. — Michael Robotham

There's an enormous difference between being a story writer and being a regular person. As a person, it's your duty to stay on a straight and even keel, not to break down blubbering in the streets, not to pull rude drivers from their cars, not to swing from the branches of trees. But as a writer it's your duty to lie and to view everything in life, however outrageous, as an interesting possibility. You may need to be ruthless or amoral in your writing to be original. Telling a story straight from real life is only being a reporter, not a creator. You have to make your story bigger, better, more magical, more meaningful than life is, no matter how special or wonderful in real life the moment may have been. — Rick Bass

It meant nothing. Some people are like that: everything comes out like a lie. Not that they're brilliant liars, just that they're useless at telling the truth. You get left with no way to tell what's the real fake and what's the fake one. — Tana French

My idol is Emile Zola. He was a man of the left, so people expected of him a kind of 'Les Miserables,' in which the underdogs are always noble people. But he went out, and found a lot of ambitious, drunk, slothful and mean people out there. Zola simply could not - and was not interested in - telling a lie. — Tom Wolfe

If someone tells you a lie, they're not telling you the truth, but they are telling you something. It just takes longer to figure out what. — Margot Livesey

If we're going to die there's no harm in telling me pretty lies, In the end it won't matter, and I'll die happy."
"I have no intention of letting either of us die. And then where would the lies get us?"
"If you manage to keep us alive then I promise I'll forget. Just tell me you care about me. If we're going to die then how important is the truth?"
"It's because we might die that the truth is particularly important,And telling you that I care about you is a waste of time. I wouldn't have crossed the ocean, come out of hiding and tracked you down if
you didn't matter to me."
"Then come up with a better lie. Tell me you love me."
"You don't need lies, Chloe,I do love you." he said. — Anne Stuart

Lie Test: Do you want to check if your present role is a dream job? The following thought should answer your dilemma - "If you are truly involved in your tasks at work, eight hours can make you feel few minutes; otherwise one would feel few minutes as eight hours" Your mind can never lie! What did your test telling you? — Santosh Avvannavar

It was a beautiful lie that they had all been telling themselves - that you could have magic without monsters. — Anne Ursu

After all, truth is not always a virtue when it is pursued for its own sake or, worse, simply to make its teller feel morally superior. That's the problem with those who let the rules of religion overshadow its spirit
which is, of course, love. And grace. In other words, there are times when telling an outright lie may be the most loving thing a person can do. — Josh Sundquist

I pull her closer toward me, telling myself I'm only doing it to steady her. It's a lie. I want her heat, her smell, the feel of her body pressed against mine. — N.E. Henderson

That's what you get for telling the truth. Someone calls you a liar. Most people will accept a likely lie to an unlikely truth. In fact, they prefer it. — Laurell K. Hamilton

What is worse than doing evil, is being evil" (Ethics, p.67). To lie is wrong, but what is worse than the lie is the liar, for the liar contaminates everything he says, because everything he says is meant to further a cause that is false. The liar as liar has endorsed a world of falsehood and deception, and to focus only on the truth or falsity of his particular statements is to miss the danger of being caught up in his twisted world. This is why, as Bonhoeffer says, that "(i)t is worse for a liar to tell the truth than for a lover of truth to lie" (Ethics, p.67). — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The commentator says: The West is trying to spread panic, telling lies about the accident. And then they show the dosimeter again, measuring some fish on a plate, or a chocolate bar, or some pancakes at an open pancake stand. It was all a lie. The military dosimeters then in use by our armed forces were designed to measure the radioactive background, not individual products. This level of lying, this incredible level, with which Chernobyl is connected in our minds, was comparable only to the level of lies during the big war. — Svetlana Alexievich

If she is given full immunity ... in order to verify that she's telling the truth, which I'm sure she is, I would be happy to submit her to a polygraph examination. Lie detector's not a good word because they can't detect lies. — William H. Ginsburg

It's a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies. The only variable is about what. The weird thing about telling someone they're dying is it tends to focus their priorities. You find out what matters to them. What they're willing to die for. What they're willing to lie for. — David Shore

At the lobby desk, the manager informed them that there was no room for them there either. Fieberling, who was leading-man handsome, flashed a confident grin and asked for the manager's name, telling him that his squadron's orders to lodge there had come directly from Admiral Nimitz, and he would need to advise the commander-in-chief why his order had been disobeyed. It was a bald-faced lie, but the manager nervously disappeared into his office. A minute later he came back out smiling at Fieberling as if he had just won the lottery. — Robert J. Mrazek

In a few more days I'd anticipated telling Veronika that our injections had cured her heart condition. But in light of her unscheduled departure form Villette my telling that particular lie will not be required. The majority of people who attempt suicide repeat that attempt until they succeed. I took a risk in lying to her about her condition, i decided to test the only remedy i have come to have any faith in: awareness of life. Until she finds out from some other doctor that she is perfectly healthy. She'll consider each day a miracle. Which in my view it is. — Paulo Coelho

Once a lie is told, you have to keep on telling it. You not only have to repeat it time and time again, you have to embellish it, layer upon layer until you don't even remember the truth. — Cassie Dandridge Selleck

I have a friend who is an excellent liar. His secret: Believe the lie yourself when you're telling it. — Jack Heffron

I lie and repeat these words over to myself, and find that they are capital. Little by little others come and fit themselves to the preceding ones. I grow keenly wakeful. I get up and snatch paper and pencil from the table behind my bed. It was as if a vein had burst in me ; one word follows another, and they fit themselves together harmoniously with telling effect. Scenes piles on scene, actions and speeches bubble up in my brain, and a wonderful sense of pleasure empowers me. I write as one possessed, and fill page after page without a moment's pause — Knut Hamsun

An upset is our maker's way of telling us that we need to learn something. It is a tap on our shoulder saying, 'Pay attention. You have something important to learn. If you lie, blame, justify, or deny the upset, you waste the upset and will waste a precious gem of wisdom.'" Rich — Robert T. Kiyosaki

Pain stabs through me as everything I am made of collapses, my entire world dismantled in a moment. The pavement scrapes my knees. If I lie down now, this can all be done. Maybe Eric was right, and choosing death is like exploring an unknown, uncertain place. I feel Tobias brushing my hair back before the first simulation. I hear him telling me to be brave. I hear my mother telling me to be brave. The Dauntless soldiers turn as if moved by the same mind. Somehow I get up and start running. I am brave. — Veronica Roth

Promises are like silly jokes, told around a table when the food is good and no one has anything to lose by telling a lie or two - lies should have been a synonym for the word 'promise' in dictionaries, but only a few people knew it. — Cameron Jace

Tessa was convinced that it was a lie, and also that everything she had done in her life, telling herself that it was for the best, had been no more than blind selfishness, generating confusion and mess all around. But who could bear to know which stars were already dead, she thought, blinking up at the night sky; could anybody stand to know they all were? — J.K. Rowling

What is whiter than snow?' he said. 'The truth,' said Grania.
'What is the best colour?' said Finn. 'The colour of childhood,' said she.
'What is hotter than fire?' 'The face of a hospitable man when he sees a stranger coming in, and the house empty.'
'What has a taste more bitter than poison?' 'The reproach of an enemy.'
'What is best for a champion?' 'His doings to be high, and his pride to be low.'
'What is the best of jewels?' 'A knife.'
'What is sharper than a sword?' 'The wit of a woman between two men.'
'What is quicker than the wind?' said Finn then. 'A woman's mind,' said Grania. And indeed she was telling no lie when she said that. — Lady Augusta Gregory

We tend to be taken aback by the thought that God could be angry. how can a deity who is perfect and loving ever be angry? ... We take pride in our tolerance of the excesses of others. So what is God's problem? ... But love detests what destroys the beloved. Real love stands against the deception, the lie, the sin that destroys. Nearly a century ago the theologian E.H. Glifford wrote: 'Human love here offers a true analogy: the more a father loves his son, the more he hates in him the drunkard, the liar, the traitor.' ... Anger isn't the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference ... How can a good God forgive bad people without compromising himself? Does he just play fast and loose with the facts? 'Oh, never mind ... boys will be boys'. Try telling that to a survivor of the Cambodian 'killing fields' or to someone who lost an entire family in the Holocaust. No. To be truly good one has to be outraged by evil and implacably hostile to injustice. — Rebecca Manley Pippert

Besides, is it really a lie when the person you're telling it to knows you aren't being truthful in the first place? — Paige Shelton

Half the truth is often a whole lie. — Frank Sonnenberg

It was after 2:00 A.M. before we got back to the graveyard. The Feds had kept us forever, like they didn't believe we were telling them the whole truth. Fancy that. I hated being accused of concealing evidence when I wasn't. Made me want to lie to them just so they wouldn't be disappointed. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd lie just to keep his hand in. — Harry Truman

I might have been a fuckup and a failure and a disappointment, but I wasn't a liar.
I did lie to Belly, though. Just that one time in that crappy motel. I did it to protect her. That's what I kept telling myself. Still, if there was one moment in my life I could redo, one moment out of all the shitty moments, that was the one I'd pick. When I thought back to the look on her face - the way it just crumpled, how she'd sucked in her lips and wrinkled her nose to keep the hurt from showing - it killed me. God, if I could, I'd go back to that moment and say all the right things, I'd tell her I loved her, I'd make it so that she never look that way again. — Jenny Han

Denial may be neither a matter of telling the truth nor intentionally telling a lie. There seem to be states of mind, or even whole cultures, in which we know and don't know at the same time. — Stanley Cohen

Journalists are notoriously easy to kid. All you have to do is speak to a journalist in a very serious tone of voice, and he will be certain that you are either telling the truth or a big, important lie. — P. J. O'Rourke

Do we really need a study on why people lie? They lie because it's easy, and cowards are good at "easy." Telling the truth takes moxie, and few have it. — Donna Lynn Hope

These white folk have newspapers, magazines, radios, spokesmen to get their ideas across. If they want to tell the world a lie, they can tell it so well that it becomes the truth; and if I tell them that you're lying, they'll tell the world even if you prove you're telling the truth. Because it's the kind of lie they want to hear ... — Ralph Ellison

And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as honest man can be tortured into telling a lie. — William Faulkner

Lies hold civilization together. If people ever seriously begin telling each other what they really think, there'd be no peace. Good-bye to tact. Good-bye to being polite. Good-bye to showing tolerance for other people's buffooneries. The fact that we claim to admire Truth is probably the biggest lie of all. But that's part of the charade, part of what makes us human, and we do not even think about it. In effect, we lie to ourselves. Lies are only despicable when they betray a trust. — Jack McDevitt

I lie awake in bed until way past midnight, fervently hoping Ky is going make an appearance at any moment to explain his behavior. But as the clock chimes two, I have no choice but to face facts.
He isn't coming.
And it feels ominous.
Like the winds are changing, and destiny is altering.
His absence is more than telling.
It has a finality to it that scares me half to death. — Siobhan Davis

I'm not proud of the lies I tell my children. Some are truly selfish and for the wrong reason. "Honey, you wouldn't want a bite of Daddy's cheeseburger. It's spicy." I don't feel guilty when I deny eating my kids' after-school snacks. I feel guilty telling them that their mom did. Of course, no parent sets out to lie to his or her children. I never did. Then again, I never thought I would let my three-year-old watch TV or chew tobacco. — Jim Gaffigan

I said you lie, knave!" shouted Beaumains, drawing his sword. "And for telling such craven falsehoods, you must die!"
The knight looked plaintively at Roger. "What's wrong with this fellow?"
He was dropped on his head when he was a baby," answered Roger. — Gerald Morris

She turned to Frizz. "So you understand the problem? You can't let Tally know about Radical Honesty. There's no telling what she'll do if she finds out you could ruin her plans."
Frizz's eyebrows rose. "So let me get this straight, Aya-chan. You want me, a person who can't lie, to lie about the fact that I can't lie?"
"We need another plan," Hiro said. — Scott Westerfeld

I think I have gone through my entire public career never telling a lie. I have made mistakes but I never knowingly lied. — Ken Livingstone

People kept on calling. At first Armando told them that Jeff was in the bathroom. Then, when people started telling him that Jeff was in the bathroom a lot, he started telling them that Jeff had Irritable Bowel Syndrome. — Mark Wilkins

If you tell me the truth, the truth I'll proclaim.
If you tell me a lie, you'll be fair game. — Belva Rae Staples

A friend who attended a prestigious MBA program once told me about the business ethics course he took there. The professor counseled honest business practices for two reasons. First, if you lie or cheat you may be caught, and that would be bad for business. Second, if people in the company know they ae working in an honest business, that will boost morale ... "Tell the truth
because it's to your own advantage," was the counsel. What happens, however, when you inevitable come to situations in which telling the truth would cost you dearly? What happens when telling a particular lie would be stupendously advantageous to you? — Timothy Keller

If you tell a lie, always rehearse it. If it don't sound good to you, it won't sound good to anybody. — Satchel Paige

If you have something to say and say nothing, you are really telling a lie. — Ashleigh Brilliant

What is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth? — Robert Redford

I was in my teens and I was going through a bit of a phase, drinking a lot and doing E tablets and getting into street fighting and getting depressed. Then I'd listen to Marley and it lifted me out of it. I'd like to try and do the same for kids, that my music would give them a bit of hope and strength, and they'd know that I was telling the truth and I wouldn't lie to them. — Damien Dempsey

The first time he had taken the massa to one of these "high-falutin' to-dos," as Bell called them, Kunta had been all but overwhelmed by conflicting emotions: awe, indignation, envy, contempt, fascination, revulsion - but most of all a deep loneliness and melancholy from which it took him almost a week to recover. He couldn't believe that such incredible wealth actually existed, that people really lived that way. It took him a long time, and a great many more parties, to realize that they didn't live that way, that it was all strangely unreal, a kind of beautiful dream the white folks were having, a lie they were telling themselves: that goodness can come from badness, that it's possible to be civilized with one another without treating as human beings those whose blood, sweat, and mother's milk made possible the life of privilege they led. — Alex Haley

Save your explanations, I got some questions for you first and you'd better answer them!' [slurred Hellian.]
'With what?' [Banaschar] sneered. 'Explanations?'
'No. Answers. There's a difference-'
'Really? How? What difference?'
'Explanations are what people use when they need to lie. Y'can always tell those,'cause those don't explain nothing and then they look at you like they just cleared things up when really they did the opposite and they know it and you know it and they know you know and you know they know that you know and they know you and you know them and maybe you go out for a pitcher later but who picks up the tab? That's what I want to know.'
'Right, and answers?'
'Answers is what I get when I ask questions. Answers is when you got no choice. I ask, you tell. I ask again, you tell some more. Then I break your fingers, 'cause I don't like what you're telling me, because those answers don't explain nothing! — Steven Erikson

We enjoy telling ourselves that we will soon be gods, masters of the planet, manipulating the genes of living creatures and rebuilding the world at a nano-level as we lie back in our hammocks, attended by our robot servants. I don't believe a word of it, and I'm not sure many of us do. — Paul Kingsnorth

There are whole months at a time when my head is so full of ideas that I wake in the middle of the night and lie in the dark telling myself stories. There are also long, dark nights when I just know I'll never write another word: I'm finished, empty, a husk ... Oh dear, yes, twitch, yawn, how I've suffered insomnia for my art. — Debi Gliori

As a child, young William alarmed his parents by reporting that he experienced visions. In later life he told his friends that he had seen angels among the haymakers in the fields, which still lay in easy walking distance from Broad Street. when he got home and reported the vision, he barely escaped a thrashing for telling a lie. More disturbingly, his wife once remarked, "You know, dear, the first time you saw God was when you were four years old and he put his head to the window and set you screaming. — Leo Damrosch

I deny the lawfulness of telling a lie to a sick man for fear of alarming him; you have no business with consequences, you are to tell the truth. — Samuel Johnson

Whatever we had is over. It died the minute I walked downstairs and realized the world I'd always known was a lie.- Blaire Wynn — Abbi Glines

I look at the human sciences as poetic sciences in which there is no objectivity, and I see film as not being objective, and cinema verite as a cinema of lies that depends on the art of telling yourself lies. If you're a good storyteller then the lie is more true than reality, and if you're a bad one, the truth is worse than a half lie. — Jean Rouch

And still the text will remain, if it is really cryptic and parodying (and I tell you that it is so through and through. I might as well tell you since it won't be of any help to you. Even my admission can very well be a lie because there is dissimulation only if one tells the truth, only if one tells that one is telling the truth), still the text will remain indefinitely open, cryptic and parodying. — Jacques Derrida

What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory
meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion
is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw. — William Maxwell

You weren't going to tell us about Orsay?"
"I didn't say I - "
"You don't get to decide that, Sam. You're not the only one in charge anymore. Okay?"
Astrid had an icy sort of anger. A cold fury that manifested itself in tight lips and blazing eyes and short, carefully enunciated sentences.
"But it's okay for all of us to lie to everyone in Perdido Beach?" Sam shot back.
"We're trying to keep kids from killing themselves," Astrid said. "That's a little different from you just deciding not to tell the council that there's a crazy girl telling people to kill themselves."
"So not telling you something is a major sin, but lying to a couple of hundred people and trashing Orsay at the same time, that's fine? — Michael Grant

If you are not the free person you want to be you must find a place to tell the truth about that. To tell how things go for you. Candor is like a skein being produced inside the belly day after day, it has to get itself woven out somewhere. You could whisper down a well. You could write a letter and keep it in a drawer. You could inscribe a curse on a ribbon of lead and bury it in the ground to lie unread for thousands of years. The point is not to find a reader, the point is the telling itself. Consider a person standing alone in a room. The house is silent. She is looking down at a piece of paper. Nothing else exists. All her veins go down into this paper. She takes her pen and writes on it some marks no one else will ever see, she bestows on it a kind of surplus, she tops it off with a gesture as private and accurate as her own name — Anne Carson

There is no sincerity like a woman telling a lie. — Cecil Parker

My mouth opened.
It happened.
Yes, with my head thrown into the sky, I started howling.
Arms stretched out next to me, I howled, and everything came out of me. Visions pored up my throat and past voices surrounded me. The sky listened. The city didn't. I didn't care. All I cared about was that I was howling so that I could hear my voice and so I would remember that the boy had intensity and something to offer. I howled, oh, so loud and desperate, telling a world that I was here and I wouldn't lie down. — Markus Zusak

So much relies on one person assuming the other is telling the truth. If a person can lie to you about one thing, he can lie about something else. — Meg Rosoff

For Lorenz, virgins were not a part of his world. He was skeptical of many things I said. Later, when the serology reports proved that what I had said was not a lie, that I had been a virgin, and that I was telling the truth, he could not respect me enough. I think he felt responsible, somehow. It was, after all, in his world where this hideous thing had happened to me. A world of violent crime. — Alice Sebold

Repeat a lie a hundred times and it becomes an ideal. — Ljupka Cvetanova

And everywhere people asked him why he was walking through the country.
Because he loved true things, he tried to explain. He said he was nervous and besides he wanted to see the country, smell the ground and look at grass and birds and trees, to savor the country, and there was no other way to do it save on foot. And people didn't like him for telling the truth. They scowled, or shook and tapped their heads, they laughed as though they knew it was a lie and they appreciated a liar. And some, afraid for their daughters or pigs, told him to move on, to get going, just not to stop near their place if he knew what was good for him.
And so he stopped telling the truth. He said he was doing it on a bet - that he stood to win a hundred dollars. Everyone liked him then and believed him. — John Steinbeck

While the truth is putting on its shoes, the lie becomes a champion of a long-distance running. — Ljupka Cvetanova

When you're telling stories, you are actually trying to illuminate some portion of the truth in an artful way. The story may immediately seem to be a lie, but it's like an impressionistic painting - you see the light and the color better than you would with a photo-realistic piece. — Christopher Moore

The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Look, it's easy to outsmart a werewolf or a vampire," Jace said. "They're no smarter than anyone else. But faeries live for hundreds of years and they're as cunning as snakes. They can't lie, but they love to engage in creative truth-telling. They'll find out whatever it is you want most in the world and give it to you - with a sting in the tail of the gift that will make you regret you ever wanted it in the first place."
He sighed. "They're not really about helping people. More about harm disguised as help. — Cassandra Clare

telling a Lie meant no less than totally altering the universe. This — Terry Pratchett

But which stories do you mean, he said; and what fault do you find with them? A fault which is most serious, I said; the fault of telling a lie, and, what is more, a bad lie. But when is this fault committed? Whenever an erroneous representation is made of the nature of gods and heroes, - as when a painter paints a portrait not having the shadow of a likeness to the original. Yes, — Plato

The psychobabble spelled out in magazines, the imaginary divans we would never wish to lie on ourselves, all they do is hold up mirrors in which not a single truth is revealed, because the truth is always trounced by the lie. Was Heinz a liar by saying nothing? Did he drink because he never stopped telling lies? — Cees Nooteboom

Like one
Who having into truth, by telling of it,
Made such a sinner of his memory,
To credit his own lie. — William Shakespeare

Thais looked up from the book. For a moment he considered telling Kathel he didn't really see anything, but knew it would do no good to lie. "The book recognized me." Honesty won out. "Of course it did," Kathel said sarcastically. "Does it want a kiss hello?"
-Madison Thorne Grey, Sustenance — Madison Thorne Grey

So telling a lie becomes a sin if you tell it to take advantage of a person, but if you tell a lie to do a good thing for him that is not a sin. Even God tells lies very often; you can see this throughout history. — Sun Myung Moon

The world is on fire, young man. As writers, it is only proper that we do what we can to warn people.
But in telling the truth to the world, don't lie to yourself. Write whatever you want. Tell the truth.
Just don't imagine that you are changing anything.
Like I said, people just want to have a good time.

-Snagglepuss — Mark Russell

Do you thinking not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?
Robert Redford from the 1975 movie Three Days of the Condor — James Grady

Drawing a good picture is like telling a really good lie - the key is in the incidental detail. — Shaun Tan

A wave of blood goes up to my head, my stomach shrinks together, as if something dangerous has just missed hitting me. It's as if I've been caught stealing, or telling a lie; or as if I've heard other people talking about me, saying bad things about me, behind my back. There's the same flush of shame, of guilt and terror, and of cold disgust with myself. But I don't know where these feelings have come from, what I've done. — Margaret Atwood