Marisha Pessl Quotes

Why would anyone lie? The truth is always more colorful.

We're all liars when it serves our purpose.

You know there's no such thing as a complete lie. There's always some truth in there.

Truth is often the favorite tool of those who deceive.

A lie cannot live.

I can't say why people lie; they just do. Everyone has their own reasons for not telling the truth.

I am such a bad liar. I would like to lie, though.

The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide.

I'm a really bad liar.

Politicians are better liars than writers.

In my latter years I've decided that there's too much to keep track of when you go into the lying game. That becomes stressful and it's not for me anymore.

Some people will lie to you because they mean to. Others will do it to tell you what you want to hear.

Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.

I didn't lie. I only didn't elaborate on every detail of the truth.

… he knew the lie of silence to be as evil as the lie of speech.

Liar' is the best work I've done.

There's a difference between lying and not being straight.

What's so great about the truth? Try lying for a change, it's the currency of the world.

The lie, of course, is more interesting.

I certainly don't believe you documentary filmmakers. Like me, you are involved in making fiction, and your fiction is just as well organized and just as well predicated, but the big difference between me and you is that I'm honest and you're dishonest. I know I'm telling you lies.

Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

Glorify a lie, legalize a lie, arm and equip a lie, consecrate a lie with solemn forms and awful penalties, and after all it is nothing but a lie. It rots a land and corrupts a people like any other lie, and by and by the white light of God's truth shines clear through it, and shows it to be a lie.

Fire is to represent truth because it destroys all sophistry and lies; and the mask is for lying and falsehood which conceal truth.

There were people who lied for gain, people who lied from pain, people who lied simply because the concept of telling the truth was utterly alien to them . . . and then there were people who lied because they were waiting for it to be time to tell the truth.

There wasn't any more truth in over half of what any so-called orator said. If it wasn't a Deliberate Lie, why it was an Exaggerated Falsehood.