“People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.”

“There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.”

“Beauty lies in one’s heart and sex lies in one mind. It all depends on where your belief lies.”

“A lie is an affront to the soul, as well as an insult to the intelligence of the person to whom one lies.”

“If you want to become a man of letters and perhaps write some Histories one day, you must also lie and invent tales, otherwise your History would become monotonous. But you must act with restraint. The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things.”

“The world is composed of lies. Starting from a kid’s cute lie, a teen’s white lie, a youth’s smart lie, it grows older with us, romantic lies as a couple, effusive lies as a parent and unavoidable lies at old age. Lies are beautiful, lies are awkward. Lies are stupid, lies are witty. Everyone is a classical composer and lifetime listener of lies.”