“Now, here’s a philosophical dilemma for a vicar … is it a lie if you don’t know you’re lying? Is it a lie if you’re lying to yourself?”“Is it a sin if I tell my cousin to bugger off?”

“Sometimes,” Sam says, “I can’t tell when you’re lying.” “I never lie,” I lie.”

“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.”

“❝ SOME PEOPLE NEVER CONSIDER THE RAMIFICATIONS OF A LIE. AFTER A WHILE, A LIE CAN BECOME WHAT YOU BELIEVE AS IF IT WAS NEVER A LIE. YOU’RE FLOATING IN BETWEEN REALITY AND FICTION. THE PROBLEM IS IF YOU KEEP THAT LIE TO YOURSELF, EVENTUALLY IT WILL EAT AT YOU.”

“Don’t think I won’t know if you’re lying, I know how many bases you’ve been on, you red headed puritan. I will be able to tell fact from fiction.”

“All drama is about lies. All drama is about something that’s hidden. A drama starts because a situation becomes imbalanced by a lie. The lie may be something we tell each other or something we think about ourselves, but the lie imbalances a situation. If you’re cheating on your wife the repression of that puts things out of balance; or if you’re someone you think you’re not, and you think you should be further ahead in your job, that neurotic vision takes over your life and you’re plagued by it until you’re cleansed. At the end of a play the lie is revealed. The better the play the more surprising and inevitable the lie is. Aristotle told us this”