The Truth and Other Lies

The liars among us will know that every lie must contain a certain amount of truth if it's to be convincing. A dash of truth is often enough, but it's indispensable, like the olive in the martini.

Betrayal is a riddle we want to solve

Man is his own worst enemy; women's worst enemy is other women.

life gives you everything—but never everything at once.

Find an enemy for life and you’ve no more need of a doctor.

The telepathic contact that comes with years of marriage is often misinterpreted by outsiders as silence. Before getting married, Henry too had assumed that couples who sit at restaurant tables and eat in silence have nothing to say to one another; he now knew that they make eloquent conversation without exchanging a word, sometimes even telling each other jokes.

Anyone who discovers he or she has been systematically cheated on wants to know why and for how long and with whom. It’s normal. Betrayal is a riddle we want to solve.

Martha had warned him that success was a mere shadow that shifts with the moving sun.

Find an enemy for life and you've no more need of a doctor.

Humans make mistakes, because they believe; humans rush headlong toward ruin, because they hope. Animals don't hope, they don't look into the future, and they don't doubt themselves.

Keeping silent goes against human nature. Thus the opening sentence of Martha’s manuscript. It might easily, Henry

Perhaps deep down all horror is helplessness that wants help from us. —Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young

For the very belief in human goodness makes punishment necessary

Solving crimes is as difficult and laborious as committing them, with the difference that the lunch breaks are paid.

couldn’t be a coincidence, because coincidences happen only to atheists.

All novels tell you something about their authors, no matter how cleverly they try to conceal themselves.

But doesn’t all deception end in disappointment?

if Henry had learned anything, it was to reveal nothing that’s best left unsaid.

the sea in that car. Are you sure it’s Betty’s? She told me it was stolen.” “It

Sunlight penetrated the room and he flung the duvet aside; the sundial pointer of his morning erection showed a quarter past seven.

But aren't apathy and indifference a reasonable price to pay for a life of wealth and luxury, and better than hunger and suffering and bad teeth any day?