Quotes & Sayings About Telling Lies

I'll never speak to another person without telling the truth. I've been a cruel man in my time, I've been a devious man in my time, like everybody else. I've told lies in my time. But I've seen enough suffering to experiment with the truth. — Jack Kirby

Wherein lies a poet's claim to originality? That he invents his incidents? No. That he was present when his episodes had their birth? No. That he was first to repeat them? No. None of these things has any value. He confers on them their only originality that has any value, and that is his way of telling them. — Mark Twain

I knew she was not telling me the truth. I asked her again what had happned because I don't like it when she keeps something from me. She's not allowed. Because when she lies, someting inside me changes, and it's like the WHOLE WORLD is one way and I'm the other. Like I can't trust a thing, as if the whole world knows a secret I don't and I'm running around from person to person asking them to tell me but they won't and the more I don't know what is going on the more scared I become and I feel myself drifting farther and farther away from everyone. — Jack Gantos

Had my brother really seen me somehow, or was he merely a boy telling beautiful lies? — Alice Sebold

Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.
The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the Rand Corporation will tell you what the twenty-first century will be like. I don't recommend that you turn to the writers of fiction for such information. It's none of their business. All they're trying to do is tell you what they're like, and what you're like
what's going on
what the weather is now, today, this moment, the rain, the sunlight, look! Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming another third of it spent in telling lies. [Introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness] — Ursula K. Le Guin

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

I didn't admit it to Liz and Chloe,but I remembered exactly what I'd been thinking when I took this quiz in seventh grade.I'd been hoping I wouldn't go to hell for telling the little white lies I was telling.I would have been mortified to say so, but when I'd picked Barry Yates or Mark Jones or any boy for the rest of the quiz,i'd always meant Nick. — Jennifer Echols

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully-constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them; to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy; — George Orwell

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

Since spies must survive by telling lies, it can be hard to know when they are telling the truth. — Stephen Grey

America is a nation of liars, and for that reason science fiction has a special claim to be our national literature, as the art form best adapted to telling the lies we like to hear and to pretend we believe. — Thomas M. Disch

It is the lies he's telling her - as he has been, Nassun understands suddenly, her whole life - that really break her heart. He's said that he loves her, after all, but that obviously isn't true. He cannot love an orogene, and that is what she is. He cannot be an orogene's father, and that is why he constantly demands she be something other than what she is. — N.K. Jemisin

While they'd be setting up shots, suddenly, there were 17 make-up chicks, just listening to Marlon telling these amazing stories that were probably lies. He was a fascinating individual. I learned a lot from him. — Johnny Depp

Don't lies in the end put us on the path to truth? And don't my stories, true or false, point to the same conclusion? Don't they have the same meaning? So, what does it matter whether they are true or false if, in either case, they signify what I have been and what I am? One can sometimes see more clearly in a person who is lying than in one who is telling the truth. Like light, truth dazzles. Untruth, on the other hand, is a beautiful dusk that enhances everything. — Albert Camus

Telling one lie begets another lie that begets another lie and before you know it that lie has grandkids, great grandkids and keeps growing. It's like Lay's Potato Chips, you can't tell just one! — Sanjo Jendayi

Ugly truths are the biggest source of indigestion in humans. — Raheel Farooq

It was her grandfather who'd told her the tale of this particular violin, over and over, as if the telling could stave off loss, as if the weight and scope of human history were not found in books or in those mythic universities in Rome and Naples that no one in their village had ever seen but, rather, were encoded in objects like this one, a violin touched by hundreds of hands, loved, used, stroked, pressed, made to outlive its owners, storing their secrets and lies — Carolina De Robertis

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me. — Maya Angelou

I'm not willing to say I want to return to private life because I'm too old to begin telling lies now. — Paul O'Neill

Chess lied to herself every day; it was just something she did, like taking her pills or making sure she had a pen in her bag. Little lies, mostly. Insignificant. Of course there were big ones there, too, like telling herself that she was more than just a junkie who got lucky enough to possess a talent not everyone had. That she was alone by choice and that she was not terrified of other people because they couldn't be trusted, because they carried filth in their minds and pain in their hands and they would smear both all over her given half the chance. — Stacia Kane

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

Telling one lie almost always requires another, and before the storyteller knows it, they will be caught inside of their own web. — Jenna Alatari

How people see the world is often a reflection of how they see themselves. If they think that the world is just a cesspool of lies and deceit, then they themselves may be full of lies and deceit. Watch out for those people who are always telling you just how corrupt the rest of the world is. As the saying goes, 'It takes one to know one.' — David J. Lieberman

Ponder had invented a little system he'd called, in the privacy of his head, Lies-to-Wizards. It was for their own good, he told himself. There was no point in telling your bosses everything; they were busy men, they didn't want explanations. There was no point in burdening them. What they wanted was little stories that they felt they could understand, and then they'd go away and stop worrying. — Terry Pratchett

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

According to the biblical tradition the absence of work
idleness
was a condition of the first man's state of blessedness before the Fall. The love of idleness has been preserved in fallen man, but now a heavy curse lies upon him, not only because we have to earn our bread by the sweat of our brow, but also because our sense of morality will not allow us to be both idle and at ease. Whenever we are idle a secret voice keeps telling us to feel guilty. If man could discover a state in which he could be idle and still feel useful and on the path of duty, he would have regained one aspect of that primitive state of blessedness. And there is one such state of enforced and irreproachable idleness enjoyed by an entire class of men
the military class. It is this state of enforced and irreproachable idleness that forms the chief attraction of military service, and it always will. — Leo Tolstoy

We reveal more of ourselves in the lies we tell than we do when we try to tell the truth. — Dorothy Salisbury Davis

I love you, and because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies. — Pietro Aretino

Truth is much like fire. Hard to understand, ever-changing. — Will Bly

DENIAL OF EMOTIONS
Our culture does not handle emotions well. We like folks to be happy and fine. We learn rituals of acting happy and fine at an early age. I can remember many times telling people "I'm fine" when I felt like the world was caving in on me. I often think of Senator Muskie who cried on the campaign trail when running for president. From that moment on he was history. We don't want a president who has emotions. We would rather have one that can act! Emotions are certainly not acceptable in the workplace. True expression of any emotions that are not "positive" are met with disdain. — John Bradshaw

Tell me, what did you think of me before that day I gave you that note?"
He did not feel any temptation to tell lies to her. It was even a sort of love-offering to start off by telling the worst.
"I hated the sight of you," he said. "I wanted to rape you and then murder you afterwards. Two weeks ago I thought seriously of smashing your head in with a cobble-stone. — George Orwell

All propaganda is lies, even when one is telling the truth. — George Orwell

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

but he was afraid of being insincere and telling lies in the presence of death. It was on a fine winter's day, shot through with sunlight. In the pale blue sky, you could sense the cold all spangled with yellow. The cemetery overlooked the town, and you could see the fine transparent sun setting in the bay quivering with light, like a moist lip. — Albert Camus

The fat Russian agent was cornering all the foreign refugees in turn and explaining plausibly that this whole affair was an Anarchist plot. I watched him with some interest, for it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies - unless one counts journalists. — George Orwell

Was I a secret not worth sharing
Or
Was I a fact not worth telling? — Dawn Lanuza

Telling lies and being deceitful takes so much more energy than being honest and sincere. — Steven Aitchison

Now, I know from experience that the trouble with one lie is that it usually takes more lies to cover it up. And if you don't watch out, you wind up telling lies to cover up the lies that are covering up the original lie. — Wendelin Van Draanen

What a terrible man, I thought, worse than a traitor. At least a traitor betrays people by telling the truth. Uncle Zhu tried to save himself by telling lies. — Ji-li Jiang

Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning. — Franz Kafka

Don't be afraid to tell the truth. It's better to hurt someone by truth than to make them happy by lies. — Khaled Hosseini

So much was so easy. Glamour was second nature. It was just making folk see what they wanted to see. Fooling folk was as simple as singing. Tricking folk and telling lies, it was like breathing.
But this? Convincing someone of the truth that they were too twisted to see? How could you even begin? — Patrick Rothfuss

When the hate don't work , they start telling lies. — Werley Nortreus

I imagined the lies the valedictorian was telling them right now. About the exciting future that lies ahead. I wish she'd tell them the truth: Half of you have gone as far in life as you're ever going to. Look around. It's all downhill from here. The rest of us will go a bit further, a steady job, a trip to Hawaii, or a move to Phoenix, Arizona, but out of fifteen hundred how many will do anything truly worthwhile, write a play, paint a painting that will hang in a gallery, find a cure for herpes? Two of us, maybe three? And how many will find true love? About the same. And enlightenment? Maybe one. The rest of us will make compromises, find excuses, someone or something to blame, and hold that over our hearts like a pendant on a chain. — Janet Fitch

Lyra learns to her great cost that fantasy isn't enough. She has been lying all her life, telling stories to people, making up fantasies, and suddenly she comes to a point where that's not enough. All she can do is tell the truth. She tells the truth about her childhood, about the experiences she had in Oxford, and that is what saves her. True experience, not fantasy - reality, not lies - is what saves us in the end. — Philip Pullman

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

Most of us avoid telling the truth because it's uncomfortable. We're afraid of the consequences - making others feel uncomfortable, hurting their feelings, or risking their anger. And yet, when we don't tell the truth, and others don't tell us the truth, we can't deal with matters from a basis in reality. We've all heard the phrase that "the truth will set you free." And it will. The truth allows us to be free to deal with the way things are, not the way we imagine them to be or hope them to be or might manipulate them to be with our lies. The truth also frees up our energy. It takes energy to withhold the truth, keep a secret, or keep up an act. — Jack Canfield

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

What is it they say about telling lies? You have to remember every detail, and sooner or later you get caught. — Adrian R. Magnuson

There's an old Northlands saying that goes like this: When lies don't help. try telling the truth. Loki knew it well, of course, but preferred his own version, which was: When lies don't help, tell better lies. — Joanne Harris

When you're eleven you think every idea is born with you, that no one ever tried it the right way before. Your example, your own honesty, will make you a hero to everyone who knows you - and better, it will make people come to their senses and stop telling vicious lies about each other. — Elana Dykewomon

The English are polite by telling lies. The Americans are polite by telling the truth. — Malcolm Bradbury

Next minute you'll be telling me there's nothing wrong,' he said softly. 'One of the all time favourite lies women employ when they're hiding huge grievances. — Lindsay Armstrong

True success - financial, personal, and professional - lies above all in loving your family, working hard, and living your passion. In telling your story. In authenticity, hustle, and patience. In caring fiercely about the big and the small stuff. In valuing legacy over currency. — Gary Vaynerchuk

Because we both knew that sometimes the lies you tell are less frightening than the loneliness you might feel if you stopped telling them. — Brock Clarke

If someone lied to you, and you positively know this is true, you may find delight in telling them they are the most honest person you know; continue flattering them, giving them the most wonderful compliments, including how you're so thankful to have such an honest person in such a deceptive world. But, then again, this may very well make you a liar too. — K.R. Royal

The secret of boring people lies in telling them everything. — Anton Chekhov

It is conceivable that God might have ordained to preach the Gospel directly to man through dreams, visions and revelations. But as a matter of fact, He has not done this; but rather has committed the preaching to man, telling them to go and disciple all nations. The responsibility lies squarely on our shoulders. — J. Oswald Sanders

People who say "no" right away are usually lying. A truthful person is perfectly capable of saying "no" but generally they stop and think about it first. And they add "sorry" or something like that. Maybe they come out with some questions of their own. It's human nature. They say, "Sorry, no, why, what happened? — Lee Child

War is like art. It paints a picture mixed with lies and truths in order to help one find something absolute. It brings out imagination. It brings out intelligence. It brings out illumination. The art is worth dying for. The struggle is worth the reward, because even if cause looks futile now, the idea behind it has the power to bring liberation. Although it can be considered a necessary evil, it is a remissible good. War is like art, for it paints a picture of truth. — Lionel Suggs

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

His mother?" Gracie couldn't believe it. Suzy Denton looked much too young to be his mother. And much too respectable. "But you're not a-" She cut herself off in mid-sentence as she realized what she'd almost let slip.
Suzy's wedding ring clicked against the steering wheel as she gave it a hard smack. "I'm going to kill him! He's been telling that hooker story again, hasn't he? — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

You can't build a future if you do not know who you are. You can't become who you are meant to be if you can't tell the truth about who you are, what you have, and everything about your life. The truth is the absolute essence to your success, while lies are the absolute essence to your failures. — Suze Orman

Telling effective stories is not easy. The difficulty lies not in telling the story, but in convincing everyone else to believe it. — Yuval Noah Harari

Lying eats into the soul. If it becomes a habit it frays the edge of your spirit. Truth telling, although sometimes harder to do, strengthens your heart. It serves a person ill not to tell the truth. — Theresa Breslin

He kept telling me his affair was over, but I kept catching him in lies. He wouldn't shake this woman, and I simply could not trust him anymore. — Brandi Glanville

She keeps telling
herself and others
that she doesn't want
a relationship to silence
the longing in her soul.
That alternative fact
feeds her insecurities
and starves her soul. — Sanjo Jendayi

The kiss has started something bigger between us, and the lies I'm telling Stirling will only get worse from here on in. — K.C. Finn

Stories are just stories," Kara said. "People used to speak ill of me all the time. Doesn't make it true." "Sometimes lies do grow in the telling," Mary said. Then she leaned forward, her gray eyes flickering in the firelight. "But in my particular case, everything you've heard is true. Every unimaginable horror happened just the way the talespinners say. It's important you know that, Kara Westfall. — J.A. White

Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air. His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself - that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word "doublethink" involved the use of doublethink. — George Orwell

Sometimes lies are more dependable than the truth. — Orson Scott Card

Telling lies is a really terrible thing. These days, lies and silence are the two greatest sins in human society you might say. In reality, we tell lots of lies, and we often break into silence. However, if we were constant;y talking year-round, and telling only the truth truth would probably lose some of its value. — Haruki Murakami

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

Matter signals to its lost voyagers, telling them that their quest is vain, and that their homeland already lies in ashes behind them. — Nick Land

Trust grows when people see leaders translate their personal integrity into organizational fidelity. At the heart of fidelity lies truth-telling and promise-keeping. — Max De Pree

But books were full of stories and stories were full of lies and lies hurt Jesus's feelings, so I didn't know what to think. I blamed my family. They were the ones who taught me so much about telling stories, and how not to do it, and then, in inspired moments of surprise, how to tell one so good you forgot what day it was, and I liked forgetting what day it was, so I made certain life choices that would allow me to get paid to forget what day it was and teach others to forget what day it was, which is, after all, what I think heaven probably is: the whole world, forgetting what day it is. You have to, I bet, with an endless supply of them. — Harrison Scott Key

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

Man is a political animal' said Aristotle telling one of the greatest lies in human history. For every man has more in common with the hills and with the stars than with other men. — William S. Burroughs

And if all that wasn't enough, you're a good fucking human being, and I'm not losing you to whatever bullshit lies your head is telling you. I know you don't have any family, so I'm officially stepping in and stepping up. I will fight for you until you can fight for yourself. You hear me? The — Laura Kaye

He discusses his service in Iraq, the wounds he suffered there, and he says to me in this ad, 'Until you have the guts to call me a 'phony soldier' to my face, stop telling lies about my service.' You know, this is such a blatant use of a valiant combat veteran, lying to him about what I said, then strapping those lies to his belt, sending him out via the media in a TV ad to walk into as many people as he can walk into. — Rush Limbaugh

Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it. — Martha Graham

Harris: Yes. In fact, self-deception might have paid evolutionary dividends in other ways. Robert Trivers argues, for instance, that people who can believe their own lies turn out to be the best liars of all - and an ability to deceive rivals has obvious advantages in the state of nature. Now, clearly many things may have been adaptive for our ancestors - such as tribal warfare, rape, xenophobia - that we now deem unethical and would never want to defend. But I'm wondering if you see any possibility that a social system that maximizes truth-telling could be one that fails to maximize the well-being of all participants. Is it possible that some measure of deception is good for us? — Sam Harris

When a Cabinet Minister who is sacked for telling lies is re-appointed, in the face of every constitutional convention, only for the same man to be sacked again from the same Cabinet for the same offence by the same Prime Minister no wonder the public are cynical about politics. — William Hague

When our laws tell people that what lies behind the thin wall of a women's abdomen during pregnancy is not a human being and that the destiny of a preborn child lies with the private conscience of the mother, we are essentially telling society that life itself is not important enough to be called an inalienable right. If life itself is not the most fundamental of all rights, then what is? — Bob Dornan

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

When the Rabbis stated that obedience or disobedience to the commandments depends not on the will of Hashem but on man's free will, they echoed Jeremiah, who said, "Out of the mouth of the Most High there comes neither the bad nor the good" (Lamentations 3:38). By the bad he meant vice, and by the good he intended virtue, meaning that Hashem does not predetermine any person as bad or good. Since this is so, a person owes it to himself to mourn his sins and transgressions, since he has committed them of his own free will, as Jeremiah says, "For what should a living man mourn? Let every man mourn because of his sins" (Lamentations 3:39). Jeremiah answers his question positively, telling us that the remedy for our disease lies with us. Just as our failings stemmed from our own free will, so do we have the power to repent of our evil deeds. — Maimonides

If there is the truth to be told to the young, is the truth of not to lie. — Auliq Ice

[I]t struck me how easy it is to bamboozle an uneducated audience if you have prepared beforehand a set of repartees with which to evade awkward questions."
...
"You can go on and on telling lies, and the most palpable lies at that, and even if they are not actually believed, there is no strong revulsion either. We are all drowning in filth. When I talk to anyone or read the writings of anyone who has an axe to grind, I feel that intellectual honesty and balanced judgment have simply disappeared from the face of the earth. Everyone's thought is forensic, everyone is simply putting a 'case' with deliberate suppression of his opponent's point of view, and, what is more, with complete insensitiveness to any sufferings except those of himself and his friends ... . But is there no one who has both firm opinions and a balanced outlook? Actually there are plenty, but they are powerless. All power is in the hands of paranoiacs. — George Orwell

I was a wrecked thing smeared over with dark finger marks and stuck with shards of nightmare, and I had no right there any more. I moved through my lost life like a ghost, trying not to touch anything with my bleeding hands, and dreamed of learning to sail in a warm place, Bermuda or Bondi, and telling people sweet soft lies about my past. — Tana French

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

He tells so many lies that he convinces himself after a while that he's telling the truth. He just doesn't recognize truth or falsehood. — Robert Kennedy

Telling lies is a bit like tiling bathrooms - if you don't know how to do it properly, it's best not to try. — Tom Holt

Truth will keep on telling the truth
Lies will lie to be more uncouth
No more rainbow after the storm
Nowhere to escape leaving the norm — Munia Khan

Logic!" said the Professor half to himself. "Why don't they teach logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is
telling the truth. You know she doesn't tell lies and it is obvious that she is not mad. For the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth. — C.S. Lewis

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

I asked her what a true story was because I thought that all stories were made up. She said a true story was called fact, and a made-up story was called ficton. Auntie May said a made-up story is a bit like telling lies, only the people who read them knew that already and so it didn't matter — Rebecca Lloyd

THE MYTH OF THE GOOD OL BOY AND THE NICE GAL
The good of boy myth and the nice gal are a kind of social conformity myth. They create a real paradox when put together with the "rugged individual" part of the Success Myth. How can I be a rugged individual, be my own man and conform at the same time? Conforming means "Don't make a wave", "Don't rock the boat". Be a nice gal or a good ol' boy. This means that we have to pretend a lot.
"We are taught to be nice and polite. We are taught that these behaviors (most often lies) are better than telling the truth. Our churches, schools, and politics are rampant with teaching dishonesty (saying things we don't mean and pretending to feel ways we don't feel). We smile when we feel sad; laugh nervously when dealing with grief; laugh at jokes we don't think are funny; tell people things to be polite that we surely don't mean."
- Bradshaw On: The Family — John Bradshaw