A. S. Byatt Quotes

If you want to be true to life, start lying about it

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

I get paid to lie to people as an actor. Country music is the one area that I don't lie. I tell the truth.

The great advantage about telling the truth is that nobody ever believes it.

I can't tell a lie - not even when I hear one.

I've tried to do away with lying in my life in the last few years, but it's hard.

People assume actors are born liars, but I'd argue the actor's job is to tell the truth. And I've realised I'm not a good liar.

People who are deceptive themselves have a really good ear for deception. They know when somebody's telling the truth or not, and so one of the ways around that is to always be telling the truth - or some version of it.

People ask me about past projects I've worked on, and other things; I'm just really bad at lying. I have a bad poker face, so I just try to tell people how I'm feeling in the moment and really what I was trying to do.

Everybody is always like, 'You must be a really good liar,' and no, I'm actually a truth teller, and I'm telling someone else's truth. If I'm lying, then I'm not doing my job correctly.

Study after study shows that people are much less likely to lie to a person they consider to be honest.

Truth-tellers who expect others to believe them tend to speak naturally and un-self-consciously. But if they don't expect to be believed, they may try too hard to seem honest. Unfortunately, the result makes them sound less believable. Obviously, then, not every oddly phrased statement is a lie.

The truth is always an insult or a joke, lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone's comfort

My own luck has been curious all my literary life; I never could tell a lie that anyone would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.

It is much harder to lie to someone's face. But. It is also much harder to tell the truth to someone's face.

Trust me, I'm telling you stories.

Books do pretend ...but squeezed in between is even more that is true—without what you may call the lies, the pages would be too light for the truth, you see?

What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this -- two things: I crave truth. And I lie.

A lot of fancier yarns come from people trying to tell the truth. It’s not easy once you’re out of the habit.

Always tell the truth. That way you don't have to remember what you said.

I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman's charm is fifty per cent illusion, but when a thing is important I tell the truth. - Blanche Scene II

Lying is too much trouble. You have to make sure to taste each word before letting it off your tongue. I hate that. It's hard enough making people understand without lying.

I have always had such sincere love for truth, that I have often begun by telling stories for the purpose of getting truth to enter the heads of those who could not appreciate its charms.

As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the art of lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth.

I'm planning, you see, to try to confine myself to the truth. That's hard for an old, inveterate fantasy martyr and liar who has never hesitated to give truth the form he felt the occasion demanded.