Once A Liar Always A Liar Quotes

MAKING THE LIE MAKE SENSE: When denial (his or ours) can no longer hold and we finally have to admit to ourselves that we’ve been lied to, we search frantically for ways to keep it from disrupting our lives. So we rationalize. We find “good reasons” to justify his lying, just as he almost always accompanies his confessions with “good reasons” for his lies. He tells us he only lied because…. We tell ourselves he only lied because…. We make excuses for him: The lying wasn’t significant/Everybody lies/He’s only human/I have no right to judge him. Allowing the lies to register in our consciousness means having to make room for any number of frightening possibilities: • He’s not the man I thought he was. • The relationship has spun out of control and I don’t know what to do • The relationship may be over. Most women will do almost anything to avoid having to face these truths. Even if we yell and scream at him when we discover that he’s lied to us, once the dust settles, most of us will opt for the comforting territory of rationalization. In fact, many of us are willing to rewire our senses, short-circuit our instincts and intelligence, and accept the seductive comfort of self-delusion.

Though Alec had never seen the occupants of the first floor loft, they seemed to be engaged in a tempestuous romance. Once there had been a bunch of someone's belongings strewn all over the landing with a note attached to a jacket lapel addressed to "A lying liar who lies." Right now there was a bouquet of flowers taped to the door with a card tucked among the blooms that read I'M SORRY. That was the thing about New York: you always knew more about your neighbors' business than you wanted to.

Some people say, “Once you learn to be happy, you won't tolerate being around people who make you feel anything less.” My Christ says, “Your job is to get off your self righteous butt and start reaching out to the difficult people because my ministry wasn’t about a bunch of nice people getting together once a week to sing hymns and get a feel good message, that you may or may not apply, depending on the depth of your anger for someone. It is about caring for and helping the broken hearted, the difficult, the hurt, the misunderstood, the repulsive, the wicked and the liars. It is about turning the other cheek when someone hurts you. It is about loving one another and making amends. It is allowing people as many chances as they need because God gives them endless chances. When you do this then you will know me and you will know true happiness and peace. Until then, you will never know who I really am. You will always be just a fan or a Sunday only warrior. You will continue to represent who you are to the world, but not me. I am the God that rescues.

Once upon a time there was a king who had three beautiful daughters. No, no, wait. Once upon a time there were three bears who lived in a wee house in the woods. Once upon a time there were three soldiers, tramping together down the road after the war. Once upon a time there were three little pigs. Once upon a time there were three brothers. No, this is it. This is the variation I want. Once upon a time there were three Beautiful children, two boys and a girl. When each baby was born, the parents rejoiced, the heavens rejoiced, even the fairies rejoiced. The fairies came to christening parties and gave the babies magical gifts. Bounce, effort, and snark. Contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee. Sugar, curiosity, and rain. And yet, there was a witch. There's always a witch. This which was the same age as the beautiful children, and as she and they grew, she was jealous of the girl, and jealous of the boys, too. They were blessed with all these fairy gifts, gifts the witch had been denied at her own christening. The eldest boy was strong and fast, capable and handsome. Though it's true, he was exceptionally short. The next boy was studious and open hearted. Though it's true, he was an outsider. And the girl was witty, Generous, and ethical. Though it's true, she felt powerless. The witch, she was none of these things, for her parents had angered the fairies. No gifts were ever bestowed upon her. She was lonely. Her only strength was her dark and ugly magic. She confuse being spartan with being charitable, and gave away her possessions without truly doing good with them. She confuse being sick with being brave, and suffered agonies while imagining she merited praise for it. She confused wit with intelligence, and made people laugh rather than lightening their hearts are making them think. Hey magic was all she had, and she used it to destroy what she most admired. She visited each young person in turn in their tenth birthday, but did not harm them out right. The protection of some kind fairy - the lilac fairy, perhaps - prevented her from doing so. What she did instead was cursed them. "When you are sixteen," proclaimed the witch in a rage of jealousy, "you shall prick your finger on a spindle - no, you shall strike a match - yes, you will strike a match and did in its flame." The parents of the beautiful children were frightened of the curse, and tried, as people will do, to avoid it. They moved themselves and the children far away, to a castle on a windswept Island. A castle where there were no matches. There, surely, they would be safe. There, Surely, the witch would never find them. But find them she did. And when they were fifteen, these beautiful children, just before their sixteenth birthdays and when they're nervous parents not yet expecting it, the jealous which toxic, hateful self into their lives in the shape of a blonde meeting. The maiden befriended the beautiful children. She kissed him and took them on the boat rides and brought them fudge and told them stories. Then she gave them a box of matches. The children were entranced, for nearly sixteen they have never seen fire. Go on, strike, said the witch, smiling. Fire is beautiful. Nothing bad will happen. Go on, she said, the flames will cleanse your souls. Go on, she said, for you are independent thinkers. Go on, she said. What is this life we lead, if you did not take action? And they listened. They took the matches from her and they struck them. The witch watched their beauty burn, Their bounce, Their intelligence, Their wit, Their open hearts, Their charm, Their dreams for the future. She watched it all disappear in smoke.

Apologize," I ordered, striding in her direction once again. "What for?"Her gaze shifted, and she looked like she was about to throw a punch at me. "For not kissing me back when you clearly wanted to, you little liar. For fucking one of my best friends. For making that year the worst year of my life since I was nine. Apologize for not being mine when you should've been. Because Emilia, baby..." I tilted my head sideways. "It was always fucking us and you know it.

God,' she cried, 'what is love? Man seeking his own head? The human head, so rented by misery that even the teeth weigh! She couldn't tell me the truth because she had never planned it; her life was a continual accident, and how can you prepare for that? Everything we can't bear in the world, some day we find in one person, and love it all at once.... There's something evil in me that loves evil and degradation--purty's black backside! That loves honesty with a horrid love; or why have I always gone seeking it at the liar's door?

The thing is, I don’t know if these stories he was telling were mine, or his, or someone else’s. You spend your life among words, listening, making sense out of what you say and out of what you imagine other people are saying to you, believing that something in particular happened like this or that, as a result of this or that, with these or those consequences. But it is never so simple, is it? I suppose that if we read about ourselves in a book, we wouldn't recognize ourselves, we wouldn't realize that those people doing certain things and behaving in a particular manner are us. I always believed that I knew Alejandro, that I knew him intimately, I mean, the way you might know a doll you've once taken to pieces. But it wasn't true.

The ideology of amillennialism has some serious problems, because it denies many unconditional Messianic promises written concretely throughout the Old Testament. It essentially calls God a liar. The prophecies in the Bible may be fulfilled once or twice or even three times, but they are always fulfilled literally and powerfully.

A snake,” I replied, breath hitching. “I suppose . . . I’m a snake. A liar. A deceiver. Cursed to crawl on my belly and eat dust all the days of my life.” “Ah.” To my surprise, Claud’s face didn’t twist in disgust or revulsion. He nodded instead, a knowing smile playing on his lips. “Yes, I would agree with that assessment.” Humiliation hung my head. “Right. Thanks.” “Louise.” A single finger lifted my chin, forcing me to look at him. Those eyes, once warm, now blazed with intensity, with conviction. “What you are now is not what you’ve always been, nor is it what you always will be. You are a snake. Shed your skin if it no longer serves you. Transform into something different. Something better.

Everyone wants a second chance to reincarnate. To enjoy life. But in a relationship you are told that a liar will always be a liar. Or, a lover once will always love again.

Here.’ I held out a silver crown between two fingers to take his mind off it. ‘You can have this coin, or, you can have the most valuable piece of advice I own, something a wise man once told me and I’ve never shared.’ Snorri looked around at that, taking in the two of us with a raised eyebrow. ‘Well?’ I asked. Hennan furrowed his brow, staring at the coin, then at me, then at the coin. ‘I’ll…’ He reached out, then pulled his hand back. ‘I’ll … the advice.’ He blurted it out as if the words pained him. I nodded sagely. ‘Always take the money.’ Hennan

He knew he could never jingle change in his pocket or park his car like a confident adult, he was the Adrian he had always been, casting a guilty look over a furtive shoulder, living in eternal dread of a grown-up striding forward to clip his ear. But there again, when he sipped at the whiskey his eyes failed to water and his throat forgot to burn. The body shamelessly welcomed what once it would have rejected. At breakfast he demanded not Ricicles and chocolate spread, but coffee and unbuttered toast. And if the coffee was sugared he leapt from it like a colt from an electric fence. He ate the crust and left the filling, guzzled the olives and spurned the cherries. Yet inside he remained the same Adrian who fought down the urge to stand and shout 'Bullocks' during church services, smelt his own farts and wasted hours skimming through National Geographic on the off-chance of seeing a few naked bodies.

Here are all the reasons I hate Mark, the boyfriend Jess has had since last September. 1. He makes her cry sometimes. 2. Once, I saw bruises on her side and I think he's the one who gave them to her. 3. He always wears a big orange Bengals sweatshirt. 4. He calls me Chief, when I have explained multiple times that my name is Jacob. 5. He thinks I am retarded, even though the diagnosis of mental retardation is reserved for people who score lower than 70 on an IQ test and I myself have scored 162. In my opinion, the very fact that Mark doesn't know this diagnostic criterion suggests that he's a lot closer to actual retardation than I am. 6. Last month I saw Mark in CVS with some other guys when Jess was not around. I said hello, but he pretended that he did not know me. When I told Jess and she confronted him, he denied it which means that he is both a hypocrite and a liar.

Velutha looked down at Ambassador Insect in his arms He put her down. Shaking too. "And look at you!" he said, looking at her ridiculous frothy frock "So beautiful! Getting married?" Rahel lunged at his armpits and tickled him mercilessly. Ickilee ickilee ickilee! "I saw you yesterday," she said. "Where?" Velutha made his voice high and surprised. "Liar" Rahel said. "Liar and pretender. I did see you. You were a Communist and had a shirt and a flag. And you ignored me." "Aiyyo kashtam," Velutha said. "Would I do that? You tell me, would Velutha ever do that? It must've been my Long-lost Twin brother." "Which Long-lost Twin brother?" "Urumban, silly... The one who lives in Kochi." "Who Urumban?" Then she saw the twinkle. "Liar! You haven't got a Twin brother! It wasn't Urumban! It was you!" Velutha laughed. He had a lovely laugh that he really meant "Wasn't me," he said. "I was sick in bed." "See, you’re smiling!" Rahel said. "That means it was you Smiling means 'It was you.'" "That's only in English'’ Velutha said. "In Malayalam my teacher always said that 'Smiling means it wasn’t me.'" It took Rahel a moment to sort that one out. She lunged at him once again. Ickilee ickilee ickilee! (169(

It is rather like arguing with an Irishman,” wrote Michael Hadow of his many conversations with Dayan. “He enjoys knocking down ideas just for the sake of argument and one will find him arguing in completely opposite directions on consecutive days.” Indeed, Dayan was a classic man of contradictions: famed as a warrior, he professed deep respect for the Arabs, including those who attacked his village, Nahalal, in the early 1930s, and who once beat him and left him for dead. A poet, a writer of children’s stories, he admitted publicly that he regretted having children, and was a renowned philanderer as well. A lover of the land who made a hobby of plundering it, he had amassed a huge personal collection of antiquities. A stickler for military discipline, he was prone to show contempt for the law. As one former classmate remembered, “He was a liar, a braggart, a schemer, and a prima donna—and in spite of that, the object of deep admiration.” Equally contrasting were the opinions about him. Devotees such as Meir Amit found him “original, daring, substantive, focused,” a commander who “radiated authority and leadership [with] … outstanding instincts that always hit the mark.” But many others, among them Gideon Rafael, saw another side of him: “Rocking the boat is his favorite tactic, not to overturn it, but to sway it sufficiently for the helmsman to lose his grip or for some of its unwanted passengers to fall overboard.” In private, Eshkol referred to Dayan as Abu Jildi, a scurrilous one-eyed Arab bandit.

You have no idea where Anne’s office is?” I asked, grouchy and beyond footsore, seriously envying Jack’s completely healed feet. We’d already been here for an hour and had nothing to show for it other than a few close calls with security patrols. I’d figured since I couldn’t check every room for Raquel, searching Anne-Whatever Whatever’s office for records was my next best bet. “Surprisingly enough, I do not make a habit of concerning myself with the locations of offices of people I neither know nor care anything for.” “I thought you had some big vendetta against IPCA for controlling you.” “Have you seen anyone who ever once used my name against me? Present company excepted.” I frowned, checking around a corner to a hall that was, as usual, empty. This was so much less exciting than I had been afraid it would be. Reth walked calmly forward, never pausing, never frantically checking over his shoulder. I wondered what he did to those poor suckers who had trapped him with his true name. I almost asked, but honestly, I didn’t really want to know. “Wait—you didn’t do anything to Raquel.” I inwardly cringed. Raquel had used his name against him, and there I went reminding him. “Hmm. An uncharacteristic oversight.” I snorted. “Yeah, mister always has a plan, you’re constantly missing details.” I shouldn’t push the issue lest I convince him that he still had some vengeance waiting, but I couldn’t help it. It was so unlike him. He waved an elegant hand through the air as though brushing off my observation. “Some things are beneath my attention.” “Liar.” He stopped short, and I walked a few paces before realizing he wasn’t beside me anymore. I turned and found myself sucked into his golden gaze. “You are quite blind sometimes, my love.” “What do you mean by that?” I snapped. Then my jaw dropped as he actually rolled his perfect, gigantic-bordering-on-anime golden eyes. That was so not a faerie gesture. “You just rolled your eyes!” “It would appear you are a negative influence after all.

As each German and Italian and Frankish nobleman arrived in Constantinople with his own private army, ready to cross over the Bosphorus Strait and face the enemy, Alexius had demanded a sacred oath. Whatever “cities, countries or forces he might in future subdue . . . he would hand over to the officer appointed by the emperor.” They were, after all, there to fight for Christendom; and Alexius Comnenus was the ruler of Christendom in the east.1 Just as Alexius had feared, the chance to build private kingdoms in the Holy Land proved too tempting. The first knight to bite the apple was the Norman soldier Bohemund, who had arrived in Constantinople at the start of the First Crusade and immediately became one of the foremost commanders of the Crusader armies. Spearheading the capture of the great city Antioch in 1098, Bohemund at once named himself its prince and flatly refused to honor his oath. (“Bohemund,” remarked Alexius’s daughter and biographer, Anna, “was by nature a liar.”) By 1100, Antioch had been joined by two other Crusader kingdoms—the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the County of Edessa—and Bohemund himself was busy agitating the Christians of Asia Minor against Byzantium. By 1103, Bohemund was planning a direct attack against the walls of Constantinople itself.2 To mount this assault, Bohemund needed to recruit more soldiers. The most likely source for reinforcements was Italy; Bohemund’s late father, Robert Guiscard, had conquered himself a kingdom in the south of Italy (the grandly named “Dukedom of Apulia and Calabria”), and Bohemund, who had been absent from Italy since heading out on crusade, had theoretically inherited its crown. Alexius knew this as well as Bohemund did, so Byzantine ships hovered in the Mediterranean, waiting to intercept any Italy-bound ships from the principality of Antioch. So Bohemund was forced to be sneaky. Anna Comnena tells us that he spread rumors everywhere: “Bohemond,” it was said, “is dead.” . . . When he perceived that the story had gone far enough, a wooden coffin was made and a bireme prepared. The coffin was placed on board and he, a still breathing “corpse,” sailed away from Soudi, the port of Antioch, for Rome. . . . At each stop the barbarians tore out their hair and paraded their mourning. But inside Bohemond, stretched out at full length, was . . . alive, breathing air in and out through hidden holes. . . . [I]n order that the corpse might appear to be in a state of rare putrefaction, they strangled or cut the throat of a cock and put that in the coffin with him. By the fourth or fifth day at the most, the horrible stench was obvious to anyone who could smell. . . . Bohemond himself derived more pleasure than anyone from his imaginary misfortune.3 Bohemund was a rascal and an opportunist, but he almost always got what he wanted; when he arrived in Italy and staged a victorious resurrection, he was able to rouse great public enthusiasm for his fight against Byzantium. In fact, his conquest of Antioch in the east had given him hero stature back in Italy. People swarmed to see him, says one contemporary historian, “as if they were going to see Christ himself.”4

The end of the war will see the final ruin of the Jew. The Jew is the incarnation of egoism. And their egoism goes so far that they're not even capable of risking their lives for the defence of their most vital interests. The Jew totally lacks any interest in things of the spirit. If he has pretended in Germany to have a bent for literature and the arts, that's only out of snobbery, or from a liking for speculation. He has no feeling for art, and no sensibility. Except in the regions where they live in groups, the Jews are said to have reached a very high cultural level! Take Nuremberg, for example: for four hundred years—that is to say, until 1838—it hadn't a single Jew in its population. Result: a situation in the first rank of German cultural life. Put the Jews all together: by the end of three hundred years, they'll have devoured one another. Where we have a philosopher, they have a Talmudistic pettifogger. What for us is an attempt to get to the bottom of things and express the inexpressible, becomes for the Jew a pretext for verbal juggleries. His only talent is for masticating ideas so as to disguise his thought. He has observed that the Aryan is stupid to the point of accepting anything in matters of religion, as soon as the idea of God is recognised. With the Aryan, the belief in the Beyond often takes a quite childish form ; but this belief does represent an effort towards a deepening of things. The man who doesn't believe in the Beyond has no understanding of religion. The great trick of Jewry was to insinuate itself fraudulently amongst the religions with a religion like Judaism, which in reality is not a religion. Simply, the Jew has put a religious camouflage over his racial doctrine. Everything he undertakes is built on this lie. The Jew can take the credit for having corrupted the Graeco- Roman world. Previously words were used to express thoughts; he used words to invent the art of disguising thoughts. Lies are his strength, his weapon in the struggle. The Jew is said to be gifted. His only gift is that of juggling with other people's property and swindling each and everyone. Suppose I find by chance a picture that I believe to be a Titian. I tell the owner what I think of it, and I offer him a price. In a similar case, the Jew begins by declaring that the picture is valueless, he buys it for a song and sells it at a profit of 5000 per cent. To persuade people that a thing which has value, has none, and vice versa—that's not a sign of intelligence. They can't even overcome the smallest economic crisis! The Jew has a talent for bringing confusion into the simplest matters, for getting everything muddled up. Thus comes the moment when nobody understands anything more about the question at issue. To tell you something utterly insignificant, the Jew drowns you in a flood of words. You try to analyse what he said, and you realise it's all wind. The Jew makes use of words to stultify his neighbours. And that's why people make them professors. The law of life is : "God helps him who helps himself!" It's so simple that everybody is convinced of it, and nobody would pay to learn it. But the Jew succeeds in getting himself rewarded for his meaningless glibness. Stop following what he says, for a moment, and at once his whole scaffolding collapses. I've always said, the Jews are the most diabolic creatures in existence, and at the same time the stupidest. They can't produce a musician, or a thinker. No art, nothing, less than nothing. They're liars, forgers, crooks. They owe their success only to the stupidity of their victims. If the Jew weren't kept presentable by the Aryan, he'd be so dirty he couldn't open his eyes. We can live without the Jews, but they couldn't live without us. When the Europeans realise that, they'll all become simultaneously aware of the solidarity that binds them together. The Jew prevents this solidarity. He owes his livelihood to the fact that this solidarity does not exist.

It really is a monstrous house,’ she thought, and recognized this to be what Dr Sedum had described in one of his ’talks’ as a mechanical pattern reaction – something to be avoided if one was to evolve. But later on in the same talk he had said that we were all liars because we were incapable of responding consistently to our environment, and then she didn’t know what to think. When she had asked Lavinia after the Time, as meetings were called in the League, Lavinia had said that one could not start at all, until one had perceived the Paradox. She had only been to one Time, and when Lavinia had said that she must not try to walk before she could fly, she realized that she had a long way to go. The moment she got into the kitchen, Claude hoisted himself wearily out of the vegetable trug by the Aga and set about his usual process of tripping her up until she had provided him with his early morning milk. This morning, she gave in to him at once; she wanted nothing to interfere with the clockwork routine which was to conclude with Herbert catching his train to London. She had told him she was having a cousin to lunch several days ago, but he had been deep in some gardening manual, and she had not been sure whether he had heard. Two hours later she waved to Herbert as he lurched down the drive in the old Wolseley. Alice had washed the car once a week before she had married, but it was one more of those things which May simply didn’t seem to get time to do. A final wave – he would not have seen her, but he liked all his expeditions to be taken seriously – and she heaved at the huge iron-studded front door until it shut with a prison-like click. There was a terrific amount to do before Dr Sedum and Lavinia arrived, but she was so exhausted with anxiety and the feeling that she was doing something exciting and momentous behind Herbert’s back that she fled to the kitchen for a cup of coffee and a cigarette (Herbert did not like her to smoke in the mornings). ‘I’ll make a list,’ she thought. She always resorted to lists: they proved that she had a great deal to do, and to some extent, as she crossed things off, they proved that she was doing them. Mrs

MT: These texts are at one and the same time very beautiful and obscure; they need to be explicated, clarified. “What is hidden will be revealed.” Why must Revelation be hidden? RG: It's not that it must be hidden, actually it's not hidden at all. It's mankind that is blind. We're inside the closure of representation, everyone is in the fishbowl of his or her culture. In other words, mankind doesn't see what I was saying earlier, the principle of illusion that governs our viewpoint. Even after the Revelation, we still don't understand. MT: Does that mean that things are going to emerge gradually, but that at first they're incomprehensible? RG: They seem incomprehensible because mankind lives under the sign of Satan, lives a lie and lives in fear of the lie, in fear of liars. The reversal performed by the Passion has yet to occur. MT: Insofar as the Church itself has been mistaken for two thousand years and has been practicing a sacrificial reading of the Passion of the Christ, that reading is a way of hiding Revelation. RG: I'm not saying that the Church is mistaken. The reading that I'm proposing is in line with all the great dogmas, but it endows them with an anthropological underpinning that had gone unnoticed. MT: Why not just clean up our bad habits by sweeping them away once and for all in the year zero, making way for an era of love and infinite peace? RG: Because the world wouldn't have been able to take it! Since the sacrificial principle is the fundamental principle of the human order—up to a certain point human beings need to pour out their violence and tensions onto scapegoats—destroying it all at once is impossible. That's why Christianity is made in such a way as to allow for transitions. This is no doubt one of the reasons why it is at once so far from and so close to myth, and always susceptible to being interpreted a bit mythically. When Nietzsche says that Christianity is impossible, that it can only lead to absurdities, to outrageous, insane things, it can be said that he's superficially right, even if ultimately he's wrong. You can't get rid of the sacrificial principle by just flicking it away as if it were a piece of dust. History isn't finished. Every day very interesting things, changes in outlook, are happening right before our eyes. In the United States and everywhere, a lot of current cultural phenomena can be unified by describing them as the discovery of new victims, or rather as their concrete rehabilitation, for in truth we've known about them for a long time: women, children, the elderly, the insane, the physically and mentally handicapped, and so forth. For example, the question of abortion, which has great importance in American debates, is no longer formulated except in the following terms: “Who is the real victim? Is it the child or is it the mother?” You can no longer defend a given position, or indeed any of them, except by making it into a contribution to the anti-victimary crusade. MT

I guess there’s nothing else to say.” “Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said, crooking a finger. “Come here.” Her throat went dry, and her heart gave a thud. On instinct, she shook her head. His expression turned ruthlessly intent. “Maddie, I’ve been thinking about that mouth of yours for almost twenty-four hours straight. You don’t think I’m going to let you go without touching you, do you?” Had it only been one day? How was that even possible? It seemed as though a lifetime had passed since she’d run out on her wedding. “Um . . .” She swallowed hard and squeaked out, “Yes?” A long pause filled with sexual awareness so thick it practically coated the air. How did he do it, flip the mood? Only moments ago, she’d felt bereft, but with one wicked glance she’d forgotten everything dogging her. “I’ll tell you what.” He smiled, and it was so filled with cunning that the fine hairs on her neck rose in anticipation. “Tell me you won’t regret it and we can end things right here with a friendly pat on the back.” “I-I d-don’t know what you mean,” she lied, loving and hating the direction the conversation had taken. “Do I need to spell it out?” “No?” The word was a question instead of the statement she’d intended. “You want to take care of yourself, right?” She nodded, sensing a trap but unable to stop playing into his hands. He leaned close, placing his elbow on the console, taking up every spare inch of breathing room. “You’re ready to ditch the good Catholic girl and start doing what you want?” The strange mixture of lust and irritation he evoked pulled in her stomach. “Well, when you put it that way.” The curve of his lips held a distinct sexual tilt. “If you get out of this car untouched, tell me you won’t lie in bed late at night and regret it. Tell me you won’t wonder and wish you’d done things differently.” Her pulse hammered and her throat dried up, leaving her unable to breathe, let alone speak. He stroked a path over the line of her jaw, and Maddie forced her eyes to stay open instead of fluttering closed from sheer desire. Why did it feel like an eternity since he’d touched her? Even more troubling, why did his hands feel so right? The slightly rough pads of his fingers trailed down the curve of her neck, leaving an explosion of tingles coursing through her. “And remember, Princess,” he said, in a deep rumble of a voice that vibrated through her as though he were her own personal tuning fork. “Lying is a sin.” She gasped, sucking in the last available bit of air left in the car. “That’s a low blow.” He gave a seductive laugh, filled with heat and promise and the kind of raw passion she’d always dreamed about. “I’m not above playing dirty.” A sly smirk as he rubbed a lazy circle over skin she hadn’t known was sensitive. “In fact, I think you prefer it that way.” “I do not!” Her heart beating far too fast, she clutched at the credit card hard enough to snap it in two. “Liar.” He slipped under the collar of her T-shirt to wrap a possessive hand around the nape of her neck. “I’m waiting.” She gritted her teeth to keep from moaning. How did one man feel so good? Hot and sinful. Irresistible. She whispered, “For what?” “My answer,” he said, inching closer. Their mouths mere inches away. She swallowed hard. The truth sat on the tip of her tongue, and for once in her life, she decided to speak it instead of stuffing it back down. “I’d regret it.” “Exactly,” he said, the word a soft breath against her skin. The pad of his thumb brushed over her bottom lip, sliding over the dampness until it felt swollen. Needy. “I can’t live with myself unless I’ve tasted this mouth.” This

I'll always come for you.' Liar. Had he found a new obsession, a new girl to kill for? Or had he simply gotten bored with their games once he had a taste of her? Had it been that, the fact that he’d had her in some way, the thrill of the chase gone?

I’m looking at a fucking angel. My angel. My anchor. Mine. I love her more than life. She once told me she would never be loved the way I love her because it comes so naturally to people who are neurotypical, and for me to feel anything like that, I’d need to try extra hard and fall deeper than any typical love. She told me it was more than enough for her. There’s fucking concrete around my black heart like a shield, and she’s trapped inside it. That’s the only version of love I have, and I’ll make sure it’s always enough for Olivia to choose me, to never leave me, to love me until we grow old, die, and find each other in the void beyond.

Apologize,” I ordered, striding in her direction once again. “What for?” Her gaze shifted, and she looked like she was about to throw a punch at me. “For not kissing me back when you clearly wanted to, you little liar. For fucking one of my best friends. For making that year the worst year of my life since I was nine. Apologize for not being mine when you should’ve been. Because Emilia, baby…” I tilted my head sideways. “It was always fucking us and you know it.

Hold still." Emma squirmed again, her lush lips curving in a smile as she gazed up at me coyly. "But it tickles." My dick pulsed, sheer lust twisting my insides up in knots. But I kept my hands steady. "Almost there." I piped another series of rosettes along the curve of her breast, heading for the pretty little pouting nipple, now deep pink and stiff. Her breath hitched, and I gave her a wicked smile. "Be good, or I won't lick it off." "Liar. You can't wait." She was laid out on my bed, wearing nothing but the lemon-buttercream flowers and swirls I'd decorated her lovely body with. "Guilty as charged." My mouth actually watered with the need to taste her, mix her flavors with my cream. Fuck up into the tight, silky-hot clasp of her body, where it felt both like home and the best pleasure I'd ever had in my life. My hand shook a little as I circled her perky nipple, choosing to highlight rather than cover it. Emma bit her bottom lip, her lids lowering as she subtly arched into the tip of the pastry bag. Heat rippled through me, and I tossed the buttercream aside. "Now, where to start?" I wanted it all at once. Every delectable inch of her. Always. All the time. Impatient and aching, I stroked my shaft, keeping the hold light lest I blow now. Because nothing looked more delicious than Emma Maron spread out before me, smiling in that way that said she was all mine. Happiness warred with lust, making for a heady cocktail in my veins. I had Emma right where I wanted her----with me. Everything else took a back seat to her and the way she watched me palm my dick, all greedy need and anticipation. It fueled my own.

A verse in a letter addressed to Titus illustrates this perfectly. Angered by some of the false teachings emerging from the island of Crete in the Mediterranean, which Titus is busy trying to fix, the apostle Paul declared, “One of Crete’s own prophets has said it: ‘Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.’ This saying is true” (Titus 1:12–13). Believe it or not, I’ve never once heard a sermon preached on this passage. And yet, if these words are truly the inerrant and unchanging words of God intended as universal commands for all people in all places at all times, and if the culture and context are irrelevant to the “plain meaning of the text,” then apparently Christians need to do a better job of mobilizing against the Cretan people. Perhaps we need to construct some “God Hates Cretans” signs, or lobby the government to deport Cretan immigrants, or boycott all movies starring Jennifer Aniston, whose father, I hear, is a lazy, evil, gluttonous Cretan. I’m being facetious of course, but my point is, we dishonor the intent and purpose of the Epistles when we assume they were written in a vacuum for the purpose of filling our desk calendars with inspirational quotes or our theology papers with proof texts. (For the record, Paul told Titus to find among the Cretans leaders who were “blameless,” “hospitable,” “self-controlled,” and “disciplined,” so obviously he didn’t apply the stereotype to all from the island.) The Epistles were never intended to be applied as law.

General Tips for Better-than-Average Lie-Detecting Sit back and let the other person volunteer information, rather than pulling it out of them. Don’t let on what you know too early—or at all. Stay relaxed and causal. What you are observing is not the person themselves, but the person as they are in a quasi-interrogational situation with you. So don’t make it seem like an inquisition, otherwise you may simply be watching them feel distressed about the situation itself. Don’t worry about individual signs and clues like touching the nose, looking up to the right or stuttering. Rather, look at how the person responds in general to shifts in the conversation, especially at junctures where you believe they may be having to concoct a story on the fly. Listen for stories that seem unusually long or detailed—liars use more words, and they may even talk more quickly. Take your time. It may be a while before you uncover a deception. But the longer the other person talks, the more chance they have of slipping up or getting their story tangled. Watch primarily for inconsistencies—details of the story that don’t add up, emotional expressions that don’t fit the story, or abrupt shifts in the way the story is told. Being chatty and then all of a sudden getting quiet and serious when you ask a particular question is certainly telling. Always interpret your conversation in light of what you already know, the context, and other details you’ve observed in your interactions with this person. It’s all about looking at patterns, and then trying to determine if any disruptions in that pattern point to something interesting. Don’t be afraid to trust your gut instinct! Your unconscious mind may have picked up some data your conscious mind hasn’t become aware of. Don’t make decisions on intuition alone, but don’t dismiss it too quickly, either. Takeaways Casual observation of body language, voice and verbal cues can help with understanding honest people, but we need more sophisticated techniques to help us detect liars. Most people are not as good at spotting deception as they think they are. Bias, expectation and the belief that we can’t or shouldn’t be lied to can get in the way of realizing we’re being deceived. Good lie detection is a dynamic process that focuses on the conversation. Use open ended questions to get people to surrender information voluntarily, and observe. Look out for overly wordy stories that are presented all at once, inconsistencies in the story or emotional affect, delays or avoidance in answering questions, or inability to answer unexpected questions. Liars are easier to spot when lying is spontaneous—try not to allow the liar any time to prepare or rehearse a script, or else ask unexpected questions or plant a lie yourself to watch their response and gain a baseline against which to compare the possible lie. Increasing cognitive load can cause a liar to fumble their story or lose track of details, revealing themselves in a lie. Keep drilling for detail and be suspicious if details don’t add up, if emotion doesn’t match content, or if the person is deliberately stalling for time. Look out for specific signs that a person is cognitively overloaded. One example is that the liar will display less emotions while speaking than they or an average person normally would in their situation. These emotions will instead leak through in their body language. Most commonly, this manifests in more frequent blinking, pupil dilation, speech disturbances, and slips of tongue. Spotting liars is notoriously difficult, but we improve our chances when we focus on strategic and targeted conversations designed to make the liar trip up on his own story, rather than trying to guess hidden intentions from body language alone.

Our hearts can be our greatest enemies. They can push us toward or to things that disrupt everything we’ve built, things that make us question everything we’ve known prior, and not always to our overall benefit. They can drag us to places we never wanted to be. Maybe your heart feels that a wild business venture is more profitable than finishing your education. Or maybe your heart tells you the man you’ve committed your life to isn’t the man you’re meant to be with. Maybe your heart is right but… what if it isn’t? What if your heart is wrong? There are only three things any of us can actually control; what we think, what we say, and what we do. As such one could argue that our only real responsibility in this life is to garner a deep understanding of ourselves and be responsible for whom we are; what we allow ourselves to become. Your life, your heart and mind, are yours and no one else’s. No one can save you or change you unless you let them unless you chose to be changed. Take responsibility for yourself. So, follow your heart, but maybe let your head step in and have a say once in a while. ------------------------------------------------------------ “Sometimes your mind and your heart want different things, and you know your heart is a liar.

She read the train schedule in dismay. There was no service for two more days. She could use charm to beg a ride from someone, but that meant being in the small confines of a car for an extended period of time. It probably was the lesser of two evils. She heard male laughter, low, amused, mocking. You would try to run from me, little one. Raven sank down onto the bed, her heart beginning to pound. His voice was black velvet, a weapon in itself. Don’t flatter yourself, hotshot. I’m a tourist, I tour. She forced her mind to be calm even as she felt the brush of his fingers on her face. How did he do that? It was the lightest caress, but she felt it down to her toes. And where were you thinking of touring? He was stretching lazily, his body refreshed from his sleep, his mind once more alive with feeling. He was enjoying sparring with her. Away from you and your bizarre games. Maybe Hungary. I’ve always wanted to go to Budapest. Little liar. You think to run back to your United States. Do you play chess? She blinked at the strange question. Chess? she echoed. Male amusement could be very annoying. Chess. Yes. Do you? Of course. Play with me. Now? She began to braid her heavy mass of hair. There was something captivating in his voice, mesmerizing. It tugged at her heartstrings, put terror in her mind. I must feed first. And you are hungry. I can feel your headache. Go down to dinner and we will meet at eleven tonight. No way. I won’t meet with you. You are afraid. It was a clear taunt. She laughed at him, the sound wrapping his body in flames. I may do foolish things occasionally, but I am never a fool.

She heard male laughter, low, amused, mocking. You would try to run from me, little one. Raven sank down onto the bed, her heart beginning to pound. His voice was black velvet, a weapon in itself. Don’t flatter yourself, hotshot. I’m a tourist, I tour. She forced her mind to be calm even as she felt the brush of his fingers on her face. How did he do that? It was the lightest caress, but she felt it down to her toes. And where were you thinking of touring? He was stretching lazily, his body refreshed from his sleep, his mind once more alive with feeling. He was enjoying sparring with her. Away from you and your bizarre games. Maybe Hungary. I’ve always wanted to go to Budapest. Little liar. You think to run back to your United States.

No, Ian. There’s been absolutely no one, though you likely can’t say the same.” She knew the truth. She’d kept track of him. He took many women, but he hadn’t been serious about any of them. “I’ve had a hundred women since you, love. I barely remember you at all.” Such a liar. He was like a freaking lion with a thorn in his paw. He always had been. She’d gotten close enough to take it out once. She just had to do it again.

Firth and Stone came to relieve us, something I always looked forward to. I loved Firth. “Karish, my beautiful, my one, my only,” she crowed, as she always did. Karish, who had risen to his feet as the ladies entered, scooped up Firth’s hand. As he always did. “Claire, my lovely,” he said in a voice as smooth as sanded wood. “It is a treasure to see you, as always.” “You liar,” she retorted. “You’re such a tease.” That was a little blunter than usual. Fun to see Karish gape like a fish, though. “I never am,” he protested. “Sure you are, lad. All heat and promises and just when you get a girl all worked up you slither out of it.” Karish blushed. I cackled. Stone smirked. Granted, I wouldn’t want a man as old as Firth drooling all over me, but Karish asked for it. He was something of a slut and wore the reputation almost proudly. From what I understood, Firth was a slut, too, and she’d had many more years to practise it. She knew how to make the elegant, confident, suave Lord Shintaro Karish blush in a way no one else could, and it delighted me every time I saw it. He should have learned to back off by then. On the other hand, he might have forgotten after all that time spent away from High Scape. For certain he beat a hasty retreat out of there, taking me with him. “Rrrrr,” Karish growled, once I closed the door behind us. “You have too much fun with her.” Hey, it wasn’t my fault. He’d started it the year before by oozing all over Firth when they met. “I have nothing to do with it.” “No, you just sit back and laugh.” He sounded almost bitter about it. “Poor boy.” My feigned sympathy couldn’t have sounded more false. “Can dish it out but you can’t take it.” He appeared scandalized. “I never behave like that.” He pointed a thumb back over his shoulder at the Stall. “No, you’re a little more subtle, but give it time.” He huffed. “I will never act that way.” “All right.” We’d wait and see. When his looks began to fade a little. In twenty years or so. “Brat.” He took my hand, and we trudged through the snow back towards the city

It took me a while to sort it out, but I realized something sitting there while Jimmy Dill was being killed at Holman prison. After working for more than twenty-five years, I understood that I don't do what I do because it's required or necessary or important. I don't do it because I have no choice. I do it because I'm broken, too. My years struggling against inequality, abusive power, poverty, oppression, and injustice had finally revealed something to me about myself. Being close to suffering, death, executions, and cruel punishments didn't just illuminate the brokenness of others; in a moment of anguish and heartbreak, it also exposed my own brokenness. You can't effectively fight abusive power, poverty, inequality, illness, oppression or injustice and not be broken by it. We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. I desperately wanted mercy for Jimmy Dill and would have done anything to create justice for him, but I couldn't pretend that his struggle was disconnected from my own. The ways in which I have been hurt- and have hurt others- are different from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connected us. Paul Farmer, the renowned physician who has spent his life trying to cure the world's sickest and poorest people, once quoted me something that the writer Thomas Merton said: We are bodies of broken bones. I guess I'd always known but never fully considered that being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we're fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we're shattered by the things we would never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion. We have a choice. We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity... I frequently had conversations with clients who were struggling and despairing over their situations- over the things they'd done, or had been done to them, that had led them to painful moments. Whenever things got really bad, and they were questioning the value of their lives, I would remind them that each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done. I told them that if someone tells a lie, that person is not just a liar, if you take something that doesn't belong to you, you are not just a thief. Even if you kill someone, you're not just a killer. I told myself that evening what I had been telling my clients for years. I am more than broken. In fact, there is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things you can't otherwise see; you hear things you can't otherwise hear. You begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each of us. p289