Thief And Liar Quotes

You have nice manners for a thief and a liar," said the dragon.

A liar, a thief, and utterly without conscience. But he'll keep to any deal you strike with him.

Dear parents, Jasmine was in a relationship with a dirty homeless boy named Aladdin. Snow White lived alone with 7 men. Pinnochio was a liar. Robin Hood was a thief. Tarzan walked around without clothes on. A stranger kissed sleeping beauty and she married him. Cinderella lied and snuck out at night to attend a party. You can't blame us. We were taught to rebel since a young age.

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.

You're a liar!" He turned around, his black eyes snapping. "I'm also a thief, a gambler, a cheat, and a murdered. But this happens to be one of the rare times when I'm telling the truth. Go home. Consider yourself lucky. You've got a chance to start fresh. Not everyone can say the same.

Memory is a traitor, and a liar, and a good-for-nothing thief.

This is me apologizing. I am a fool, a bird-brain, a liar and a horse-thief. I wouldn't touch a superlative again with an umbrella.

You're a con artist. A liar. A thief. An unredeemable soul. You can't be reformed. You can't be saved. You'll die trying to make the world pay for what it did to you. And you'll die alone.

Who was the Thief that she would love him? A youth, just a boy with hardly a beard and no sense at all... A liar, she thought, an enemy, a threat. He was brave, a voice inside her said, he was loyal... A fool, she answered back. A fool and a dead one. She ached with emptiness.

Be wary of liars. For, a liar can be your worst kind of thief. They can steal your hopes and dreams...

I loved him in that moment, loved him more than I'd ever loved anyone, and I wanted to to tell them all that I was the snake in the grass, the monster in the lake. I wasn't worthy of this sacrifice; I was a liar, a cheat, a thief. And I would have told, except that a part of me was glad. Glad that this would all be over with soon. Baba would dismiss them, there would be some pain, but life would move on. I wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe again.

I want a dyke for president. I want a person with AIDS for president and I want a fag for vice president and I want someone with no health insurance and I want someone who grew up in a place where the earth is so saturated with toxic waste that they didn’t have a choice about getting leukemia. I want a president that had an abortion at sixteen and I want a candidate who isn’t the lesser of two evils and I want a president who lost their last lover to AIDS, who still sees that in their eyes every time they lay down to rest, who held their lover in their arms and knew they were dying. I want a president with no air-conditioning, a president who has stood in line at the clinic, at the DMV, at the welfare office, and has been unemployed and laid off and sexually harassed and gaybashed and deported. I want someone who has spent the night in the tombs and had a cross burned on their lawn and survived rape. I want someone who has been in love and been hurt, who respects sex, who has made mistakes and learned from them. I want a Black woman for president. I want someone with bad teeth and an attitude, someone who has eaten that nasty hospital food, someone who crossdresses and has done drugs and been in therapy. I want someone who has committed civil disobedience. And I want to know why this isn’t possible. I want to know why we started learning somewhere down the line that a president is always a clown. Always a john and never a hooker. Always a boss and never a worker. Always a liar, always a thief, and never caught.

He lacked tenderness; he was rude; and he had more than a streak of cruelty in him; he was a thief and a liar. He stood for everything she feared and hated and despised; but she knew she could love him... This was no choice made with the mind.

But this is who you are. You’re a liar, and a thief, and a junkie. I don’t hate you, Mom. I’m disappointed in you.

All right,” she said. She got to her feet and crossed to his desk, where her knife still sat atop the maps. She thought of the way he’d plucked it out of her grip. “But I want a favor in return.” “Funny, I thought the favor was allowing you to remain on my ship, despite the fact you’re a liar, a thief, and a murderer. But please, do go on.

The narratives we create in order to justify our actions and choices become in so many ways who we are. They are the things we say back to ourselves to explain our complicated lives. Perhaps the reason you've not yet been able to forgive yourself is that you're still invested in your self-loathing. Perhaps not forgiving yourself is the flip side of your stealing-this-now cycle. Would you be a better or worse person if you forgave yourself for the bad things you did? If you perpetually condemn yourself for being a liar and a thief, does that make you good?

Your weak side, my diabolic friend, is that you have always been a gull: you take Man at his own valuation. Nothing would flatter him more than your opinion of him. He loves to think of himself as bold and bad. He is neither one nor the other: he is only a coward. Call him tyrant, murderer, pirate, bully; and he will adore you, and swagger about with the consciousness of having the blood of the old sea kings in his veins. Call him liar and thief; and he will only take an action against you for libel. But call him coward; and he will go mad with rage: he will face death to outface that stinging truth. Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one: and that one is his cowardice. Yet all his civilization is founded on his cowardice, on his abject tameness, which he calls his respectability. There are limits to what a mule or an ass will stand; but Man will suffer himself to be degraded until his vileness becomes so loathsome to his oppressors that they themselves are forced to reform it.

Lie to a liar, for lies are his coin; steal from a thief, for that is easy; lay a trap for the trickster and catch him at the first attempt, but beware of an honest man. (said by the author to be a Somali saying)

Except I won't le him, because I need him. And I might be a liar and a thief and a cheat, but I'll walk barefoot through hell for what I need.

Thieves and liars kill indirectly, unintentionally, and with no other weapon than their tongues and malice.

She’s using the pen name Juniper Song to pretend to be Chinese American. She’s taken new author photos to look more tan and ethnic, but she’s as white as they come. June Hayward, you are a thief and a liar. You’ve stolen my legacy, and now you spit on my grave.

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery. I

Please don’t hate you??!! I hate that I love you. Loving you made me waste a year of my life. Loving you made me be passionate about nothing but you. Loving you made me take risks I never would have otherwise. Loving you made me give it up to you. Loving you made me neglect my parents and Amy. Loving you made me not care that my grandma just died. Loving you made me turn out bitter and hopeless like her. Loving you made me hate myself for being dumped by you. Loving you made me deluded, irrational, inconsiderate, and a liar. And because I love you, you’re always going to haunt me. I’ll never be able to have another birthday without wondering how you’re celebrating yours. I’ll never be able to think another guy is more handsome, talented, intelligent, or worth loving than you, despite all your faults (and there are many). I’ll never be able to check my e-mail without praying I’ll find a message from you with the subject line I love you, Dom—please come back to me. Meanwhile, every corner of this city is laced with memories of us together, and I’ll never be able to leave the house without hoping and dreading that I’ll run into you. You stole Fort Myers from me, and I lived here first, you fucking thief. You actually may be one of my last thoughts when I die.

I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organised religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptised.

I told them that if someone tells a lie, that person is not *just* a liar. If you take something that does not belong to you, you're not *just* a thief. Even if you kill someone, you're not *just* a killer.

A liar thinks everyone else lies? ... A thief thinks everyone else is stealing from him? ... A philanderer thinks everyone else is philandering.

I was not much afraid of punishment, I was only afraid of disgrace.But that I feared more than death, more than crime, more than anything in the world. I should have rejoiced if the earth had swallowed me up and stifled me in the abyss. But my invincible sense of shame prevailed over everything . It was my shame that made me impudent, and the more wickedly I behaved the bolder my fear of confession made me. I saw nothing but the horror of being found out, of being publicly proclaimed, to my face, as a thief, as a liar, and slanderer.

The night before brain surgery, I thought about death. I searched out my larger values, and I asked myself, if I was going to die, did I want to do it fighting and clawing or in peaceful surrender? What sort of character did I hope to show? Was I content with myself and what I had done with my life so far? I decided that I was essentially a good person, although I could have been better--but at the same time I understood that the cancer didn't care. I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, I wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organized religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, 'But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven.' If so, I was going to reply, 'You know what? You're right. Fine.' I believed, too, in the doctors and the medicine and the surgeries--I believed in that. I believed in them. A person like Dr. Einhorn [his oncologist], that's someone to believe in, I thought, a person with the mind to develop an experimental treatment 20 years ago that now could save my life. I believed in the hard currency of his intelligence and his research. Beyond that, I had no idea where to draw the line between spiritual belief and science. But I knew this much: I believed in belief, for its own shining sake. To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe--what other choice was there? We do it every day, I realized. We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics. To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery. To continue believing in yourself, believing in the doctors, believing in the treatment, believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing, I decided. It had to be. Without belief, we would be left with nothing but an overwhelming doom, every single day. And it will beat you. I didn't fully see, until the cancer, how we fight every day against the creeping negatives of the world, how we struggle daily against the slow lapping of cynicism. Dispiritedness and disappointment, these were the real perils of life, not some sudden illness or cataclysmic millennium doomsday. I knew now why people fear cancer: because it is a slow and inevitable death, it is the very definition of cynicism and loss of spirit. So, I believed.

If a creative person steals your idea, he’s killing his creative ability, if he steals your art, he’s killing his art, if he makes it available to the world, it won,t create de impact you could have created, because it wasn’t from the right source.

Just then a word floated out through the buzz saw of Zapata-speak: Nefertari. Dan tuned back in. "...the most beautiful tomb in Egypt," Ms. Zapata was saying. "You probably know the queen because there's a famous bust of her." A photo flashed on the screen. Dan raised his hand. "That's Nefertiti," he said. "Different queen." Ms. Zapata frowned. She looked at her notes. "You could be right, Dan. Uh...let's move on." Another slide flashed on-screen. "Now, this is the inner chamber of the tomb, where she was laid to rest." Dan's hand rose again. Ms. Zapata closed her eyes. "Actually? That's the side chamber." "Really." Ms. Zapata's lips pressed together. "And how do you know this, Dan?" "Because..." Dan hesitated. Because I was there. Because I was locked inside the tomb with an ex-KGB spy, so I got to know it pretty well. "Especially since the tomb is closed for conservation," Ms. Zapata said. Yeah. But we had this connection to an Egyptologist? Except he turned out to be a thief and a liar, so we captured him. I came this close to smashing him with a lamp...

When you tell a little lie, or do a tiny cheat, or commit a small theft you are still a liar, a cheater, or a thief. Size does not matter.

Nothing had changed, nothing to remedy his pain and anger and hate. Jonah was a thief, a liar, an accessory to murder. But he had said 'Score me a try', and the words had stabbed Ben’s heart with sweetness.

Worry is a thief, Fear is a liar, and Anxiety is their trembling, furrow-browed baby.

You’re a goddamn thief and a liar, Gillian...” he whispered against my mouth as he slid his hand between my thighs and tore off my soaked panties. “A goddamn thief and a liar.

If one lie or one theft qualify one as a liar or a thief; why does one truth or one honesty not qualify one as truthful or honest? Puzzling!

He is a liar, a thief, a killer and a cannibal. And he is running for political office! Someone must stop him.

Because if you take something you're a thief.' She nursed the silence a moment. Downed the balance of her drink and silently signaled for another. 'Sounds simple, but you'd be amazed how many people don't get it. They steal but they call themselves honest. They cheat on their spouses and lovers but they think they're good people. They lie but they'd never call themselves liars. Well, let me tell you something, Todd. . . ." She pointed toward him with her right hand, with her lit cigarette. He leaned away slightly. She looked into the mirror of his eyes and saw herself going too far. 'You are what you do. That's what I'm trying to tell you. What we do defines us. However we behave, conduct our lives . . . that's real. The rest is just a story for publication.

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.

Odysseus is a migrant, but he is also a political and military leader, a strategist, a poet, a loving husband and father, an adulterer, a homeless person, an athlete, a disabled cripple, a soldier with a traumatic past, a pirate, thief and liar, a fugitive, a colonial invader, a home owner, a sailor, a construction worker, a mass murderer, and a war hero.

In a world of change and decay not even the man of faith can be completely happy. Instinctively he seeks the unchanging and is bereaved at the passing of dear familiar things. Yet much as we may deplore the lack of stability in all earthly things, in a fallen world such as this the very ability to change is a golden treasure, a gift from God of such fabulous worth as to call for constant thanksgiving. For human beings the whole possibility of redemption lies in their ability to change. To move across from one sort of person to another is the essence of repentance; the liar becomes truthful, the thief honest, the lewd pure, the proud humble. The whole moral texture of the life is altered. The thoughts, the desires, the affections are transformed, and the man is no longer what he had been before.

If you are a liar and a thief i will disagree, if you are honest and correct, i will back you 100 percent

But having lied and stolen, doesn't mean you're a liar and a thief,...

I hate a liar more than I hate thief. A thief is only after my salary, a liar is after my reality.

You see, each country has a colour, a smell, and also a contagious sickness. In my country the sickness is complacency. In France it's arrogance, and in the United States it's ignorance." "What about Rwanda?" "Easy power and impunity. Here, there's total disorder. To someone who has a little money or powere, everything that seems forbidden elsewhere looks permissible and possible. All it takes is to dare it. Someone who's simply a liar in my country can be a fraud artist here, and the fraud artist gets to be a big-time thief. Chaos and most of all poverty give him powers he wouldn't have elsewhere.

If you wouldn't invite a thief in your house why would you allow a liar in. the only difference between the two is the thief steals your money and objects the liar steals with words by deceit of manipulation by Bonnie Zackson Koury

A good thief is always a great liar. It's part of the skill set, the tools, the craft. And at that moment, Kat thought it was probably a very good thing she'd walked away from the life, because when she said, "No," Hale just smiled wider.

No one's perfect, but so many people pretend to be. That was why I liked Fiora. She lied, stole, manipulated, teased, and broke down just like everyone else. But she was an honest liar, self-admitted thief, straightforward tease, and transparent manipulator. And like the rest of us, she had bad days.

Little boys jump, but they do not know where. Into the mouth of the demon lair. Hold still and you will see, in his hand is the key. Fire and brimstone. Brimstone and fire. Your ally is clever. a thief and a liar. All is not lost. You can turn it around. But, for a moment...all will be well.....peaceful and sound." Alice.

The liar. The con. The thief. The escort. I wore many hats, playing people like they were my favorite instrument. They say you win some, you lose some, but the latter, I'd never really experienced. Not until I'd gained something that actually mattered. Fuck it. I would lose my pants, and my properties, and my business, but not her. Not Jesse.

To the thief, everyone’s a crook. To the liar, everyone’s a fraud. The curse of all sin is the mirror of false perception it traps us in.

a drowning girl who would do anything to keep afloat, a thief and a liar who owed him less than nothing.

When your partner/spouse shows you who they really are, you better believe it.

Porque la mentira edulcorada era preferible a la verdad desgarradora.

Scene VI (1940) It is our fault we love only the skull of Beauty Without knowing who she was, of what she died. We have the thief's guilt, but not his booty, The liar's spasm without ever having lied. The sick locust scrapes his injured song, His thorax only partially destroyed. Retching is prohibited. It's wrong. The murderer feels no hate he can avoid. Now flies bite worst where the skin is broken. Illness triumphs. Lesions. Soon tumors sprout. The bloated plants quiver, the seeds will be shaken. 'Your head's bashed in, darling. Look out.

I’m being blackmailed by my ex. I have a sex tape where I let some random guy do obscene things to me so that said ex could steal from him. I’m a thief and a liar and you were right about me all along.

Your weak side, my diabolic friend, is that you have always been a gull: you take Man at his own valuation. Nothing would flatter him more than your opinion of him. He loves to think of himself as bold and bad. He is neither one nor the other: he is only a coward. Call him tyrant, murderer, pirate, bully; and he will adore you, and swagger about with the consciousness of having the blood of the old sea kings in his veins. Call him liar and thief; and he will only take an action against you for libel. But call him coward; and he will go mad with rage: he will face death to outface that stinging truth.

Jarod Kintz is a friend, a lover, and a loner. Jarod Kintz talks about Jarod Kintz, because Jarod Kintz has nobody else to talk to. Jarod Kintz is also a liar and a thief, and that’s why I think he’d make a great politician.


I am a liar and a thief. Don’t let me into your house, and if you do, don’t leave me alone. I take things. You can catch me with your string of fine pearls clickering in my greedy little paws, and I’ll tell you they reminded me of my mother’s and I just had to touch them, just for a second, and I’m so sorry, I don’t know what came over me. My mom never owned any jewelry that didn’t turn her skin green, but you won’t know that. And I’ll still swipe the pearls when you’re not looking.

I believe you, man," Rabastan assures him, jerking his thumb at Rodolphus. "All he does is lie, so yeah, I believe you." "When do I lie?" Rodolphus sputters. "Name one time—" "You told me you didn't steal my pillow months ago, and I know it was you. I know it was." "It wasn't! I'm telling you, Bas, it was someone else!" "Who, then?" "Um. Well, okay, I don't know, but—" Rabastan gestures to Rodolphus, raising his eyebrows pointedly. "See? Liar." "I do see," Regulus replies with a straight face, looking completely neutral as he nods in agreement. Sirius stares at the side of Regulus' face until, finally, Regulus' gaze darts towards him very briefly before he quickly looks away, because he's a lying, sneaky little shit of a pillow thief and has no shame in it. Sirius shakes his head and looks away, reaching up to swipe a hand over his mouth to hide his grin. Rabastan and Rodolphus continue to argue about who the pillow thief is, and Sirius doesn't interrupt to inform them of the real culprit, because he knows it's his brother.

My years of 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. 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. 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 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 thought of the guards strapping Jimmy Dill to the gurney that very hour. I thought of the people who would cheer his death and see it as some kind of victory. I realized they were broken people, too, even if they would never admit it. So many of us have become afraid and angry. We've become so fearful and vengeful that we've thrown away children, discarded the disabled, and sanctioned the imprisonment of the sick and the weak - not because they are a threat to public safety or beyond rehabilitation but because we think it makes us seem tough, less broken. I thought of the victims of violent crime and the survivors of murdered loved ones, and how we've pressured them to recycle their pain and anguish and give it back to the offenders we prosecute. I thought of the many ways we've legalized vengeful and cruel punishments, how we've allowed our victimization to justify the victimization of others. We've submitted to the harsh instinct to crush those among us whose brokenness is most visible. But simply punishing the broken - walking away from them or hiding them from sight - only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity. I frequently had difficult 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 that 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.

A Word Before All Is Grace was written in a certain frame of mind—that of a ragamuffin. Therefore, This book is by the one who thought he’d be farther along by now, but he’s not. It is by the inmate who promised the parole board he’d be good, but he wasn’t. It is by the dim-eyed who showed the path to others but kept losing his way. It is by the wet-brained who believed if a little wine is good for the stomach, then a lot is great. It is by the liar, tramp, and thief; otherwise known as the priest, speaker, and author. It is by the disciple whose cheese slid off his cracker so many times he said “to hell with cheese ’n’ crackers.” It is by the young at heart but old of bone who is led these days in a way he’d rather not go. But, This book is also for the gentle ones who’ve lived among wolves. It is for those who’ve broken free of collar to romp in fields of love and marriage and divorce. It is for those who mourn, who’ve been mourning most of their lives, yet they hang on to shall be comforted. It is for those who’ve dreamed of entertaining angels but found instead a few friends of great price. It is for the younger and elder prodigals who’ve come to their senses again, and again, and again, and again. It is for those who strain at pious piffle because they’ve been swallowed by Mercy itself. This book is for myself and those who have been around the block enough times that we dare to whisper the ragamuffin’s rumor— all is grace.

She had repaid his kindness with kindness. As she would not have done if she had known who he was. What he was. When defects of character are your character, you become a what. He had noticed this. No one ever says, A liar is who you are, or Who you are is a thief. He was a what, absolutely.

If a man seeks to help and glorify his country and make her strong before her enemies his own people will leap at his throat and call him malefactor, a thief, a mountebank, a liar! Better it is to smile and smile and smile upon the people and show a shining countenance than to raise them above the ruck.

You must really hate me, huh?” she said. “No.” I took a deep breath, wiped my face with my hand. “If I thought you could change, I’d hate you for not trying.” I looked her dead in the eye. “But this is who you are. You’re a liar, and a thief, and a junkie. I don’t hate you, Mom. I’m disappointed in you.

Call him tyrant, murderer, pirate, bully; and he will adore you, and swagger about with the consciousness of having the blood of the old sea kings in his veins. Call him liar and thief; and he will only take an action against you for libel. But call him coward; and he will go mad with rage: he will face death to outface that stinging truth. Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice. Yet all his civilization is founded on his cowardice, on his abject tameness, which he calls his respectability.

even if you’re an A-plus parent who does everything “right,” your child might still grow up to be a thief, slacker, cheat, liar, addict, abuser… all these things we stay awake at night worrying about. Yep, it’s entirely true; you can do everything absolutely right, and your children still might not turn out the way you planned!

He leaned toward her father. “ ’Tis true, I am a murderer, a liar, and a thief. ’Tis equally true that I will use whatever monstrous talents I possess to keep your daughter at my side. You can take Avalene to a convent at the ends of the earth and I will find her and steal her away again. I will lie to God, himself, to free her. I will protect her with my life, and I will murder anyone who threatens her.

Now that the story’s been complicated, it’s not so satisfying to lambast me for stealing from a lovely, innocent victim. Now Athena is a pretentious snob, a maybe-racist (no one can really make up their minds on that one), a definite Han Chinese supremacist, and a thief in her own right for her representations of Korean and Vietnamese characters. Athena is the liar, the hypocrite. Athena Liu Is Posthumously Canceled.

Most of the travelers, liars, thieves, and shameless personalities of the twentieth century are not tricksters at all, then. Their disruptions are not subtle enough, or pitched at a high enough level. Trickster isn’t a run-of-themill liar and thief. When he lies and steals, it isn’t so much to get away with something or get rich as to disturb the established categories of truth and property and, by so doing, open the road to possible new worlds.

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.

Although often with good intentions, our parents and teachers attribute negative definitions to us, which last for many years and prevent us from developing ourselves with pleasure. In psychomagic, we call these definitions “labels” because they stick to the self. So that the consultant can free herself from them, I advise: ▶ The consultant writes on adhesive labels as many definitions as they gave her, for example: “You have no ear for music,” “You don’t know how to use your hands,” “You’re a freeloader, liar, thief,” “You’re egotistical, weak, dumb, fat, skinny, vain, ungrateful,” and so on. The consultant glues these labels to every part of the body— many of them to the face—and goes out in public that way for as many hours as possible. When the consultant returns home, she should remove the labels, roll them into a ball, take the ball to the city dump, and throw it on top of the garbage pile, having beforehand caressed her body with hands soaked in pleasant perfume.

Until we free our shepherds from our insistence that they be our servants, let us remember that there is someone who listens. He is available to all of us, all of the time, all of our lives. The Listener. We have only to talk to him. Now. Today. Tonight. He understands our language, our semantics, our terrors, our secrets, our sins, our crimes, our sorrow. He will not consider you sentimental if you speak fondly of the past, if you are old. He will not turn you away if you are a liar, a thief, a murderer, a hypocrite, a betrayer.

Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn’t a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I’d been baptized.

It won't work. You see, he is a liar and a thief. And he's been one for too long. He can't retire now. In addition to which. He has become, I'm afraid, a hack.' 'He may be all those things but she knows he's not.' 'What gives her that curious idea?' 'She's been with him constantly for the last few days. She's seen him shaking with terror, exhausted, ready to quit. She's watched him pull himself together again and she's also seen him be warm and tender. And funny. Not famous-international-wit funny but really funny.' 'Do you think she's an idiot? Do you think she doesn't know what kind of man he is? Or what he needs?' 'And what he needs is L-O-V-E? Uh-uh it's too late. He is 43 years old. Or will be this October. He's been married twice, both times disastrously and there have been too many years of... too much dough, too much bad writing and too much whiskey. He's got nothing left inside to give. Even if he could, which he can't.' 'But that's not true. You can, you have. I just know it.' 'No, you don't. It's lousy. In any case, the problem is you're not in love with the script. You're in love with me. And why shouldn't you be? When suddenly, waltzing into your life comes this charming and relatively handsome stranger. Me. Smooth as silk, with a highly practised line of chatter, specifically designed to knock relatively unsophisticated chicks like you Miss Simpson, right on their ears. Which I'm terribly afraid I've done. Well if it's the last decent thing I do in this world, and it very well may be, I'm going to fix that. I'm going to send you packing Miss Simpson before I cause you serious and irrevocable harm. You want the truth? Of course you don't. I'll give it to you anyway. I do not give one damn about anything.

She had done worse, all right, lots worse. She had been a thief, a pimp, a blackmailer, a junkie, a liar and a cheat. She had pretended to love men she had despised. She had done it all, and none of it had worked. Every time she got into a place where she might have had a chance, something inside her had fired up and she ruined her chances. Always…Her whole life was a clutter of three-day jobs, punctured ambitions and drug-deadened hangovers. 'Oh Lindy,' she cried out. 'Help me! Help me!' She clenched her pillow and sobbed. It had been more than twenty years since she had shed any tears for anybody. Now these tears were for herself.

Love is funny that way. It persists even when you’ve done everything in your power to banish it. It demands its own voice and refuses to be a slave to anyone but its own desires. And despite the power of it, those selfish desires are what make love so weak. It’s accepting the apologies of a cheating lover. It’s returning to a raised hand, over and over, until that hand becomes lethal, and home is in the afterlife. It’s clinging to a mother who never wanted you and hoping she will one day show up on those church steps. It’s grabbing ahold of a hand that belongs to both a father and an abuser, wailing as they slowly slip away. It’s falling in love with a liar, a thief, and praying they never hurt you again.

And I do talk a lot, obviously, about my clients; those are the people I have to advocate for, and when I say that each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done, I am thinking specifically about them. But I’m also thinking about everybody else. I mean, I believe that for every human being. I think if someone tells a lie, they’re not just a liar, that if someone takes something, they’re not just a thief. If you kill someone, you’re not just a killer. But it’s also true, a nation that committed genocide against Indigenous people, a nation that enslaved Black people for two and a half centuries, a nation that tolerated mob lynchings for nearly a century, a nation that created apartheid and segregation laws throughout most of the 20th century, can also be more than that racist history suggests.

On the bus, I pull out my book. It's the best book I've ever read, even if I'm only halfway through. It's called Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, with two dots over the e. Jane Eyre lives in England in Queen Victoria's time. She's an orphan who's taken in by a horrid rich aunt who locks her in a haunted room to punish her for lying, even though she didn't lie. Then Jane is sent to a charity school, where all she gets to eat is burnt porridge and brown stew for many years. But she grows up to be clever, slender, and wise anyway. Then she finds work as a governess in a huge manor called Thornfield, because in England houses have names. At Thornfield, the stew is less brown and the people less simple. That's as far as I've gotten... Diving back into Jane Eyre... Because she grew up to be clever, slender and wise, no one calls Jane Eyre a liar, a thief or an ugly duckling again. She tutors a young girl, Adèle, who loves her, even though all she has to her name are three plain dresses. Adèle thinks Jane Eyre's smart and always tells her so. Even Mr. Rochester agrees. He's the master of the house, slightly older and mysterious with his feverish eyebrows. He's always asking Jane to come and talk to him in the evenings, by the fire. Because she grew up to be clever, slender, and wise, Jane Eyre isn't even all that taken aback to find out she isn't a monster after all... Jane Eyre soon realizes that she's in love with Mr. Rochester, the master of Thornfield. To stop loving him so much, she first forces herself to draw a self-portrait, then a portrait of Miss Ingram, a haughty young woman with loads of money who has set her sights on marrying Mr. Rochester. Miss Ingram's portrait is soft and pink and silky. Jane draws herself: no beauty, no money, no relatives, no future. She show no mercy. All in brown. Then, on purpose, she spends all night studying both portraits to burn the images into her brain for all time. Everyone needs a strategy, even Jane Eyre... Mr. Rochester loves Jane Eyre and asks her to marry him. Strange and serious, brown dress and all, he loves her. How wonderful, how impossible. Any boy who'd love a sailboat-patterned, swimsuited sausage who tames rabid foxes would be wonderful. And impossible. Just like in Jane Eyre, the story would end badly. Just like in Jane Eyre, she'd learn the boy already has a wife as crazy as a kite, shut up in the manor tower, and that even if he loves the swimsuited sausage, he can't marry her. Then the sausage would have to leave the manor in shame and travel to the ends of the earth, her heart in a thousand pieces... Oh right, I forgot. Jane Eyre returns to Thornfield one day and discovers the crazy-as-a-kite wife set the manor on fire and did Mr. Rochester some serious harm before dying herself. When Jane shows up at the manor, she discovers Mr. Rochester in the dark, surrounded by the ruins of his castle. He is maimed, blind, unkempt. And she still loves him. He can't believe it. Neither can I. Something like that would never happen in real life. Would it? ... You'll see, the story ends well.

Don't you be wasting of me good time in the numbering of me hands," cried Freckles. "The stringth of me cause will make up for the weakness of me mimbers, and the size of a cowardly thief doesn't count. You'll think all the wildcats of the Limberlost are turned loose on you whin I come against you, and as for me cause----I slept with you, Wessner, the night I came down the corduroy like a dirty, friendless tramp, and the Boss was for taking me up, washing, clothing, and feeding me, and giving me a home full of love and tinderness, and a master to look to, and good, well-earned money in the bank. He's trusting me his heartful, and here comes you, you spotted toad of the big road, and insults me, as is an honest Irish gintleman, by hinting that you concaive I'd be willing to shut me eyes and hold fast while you rob him of the thing I was set and paid to guard, and then act the sneak and liar to him, and ruin and eternally blacken the soul of me. You damned rascal," raved Freckles, "be fighting before I forget the laws of a gintlemin's game and split your dirty head with me stick!

Neither that I picked my nose compulsively, daydreamed through my boring classes, masturbated, once in a condom I stole from my father’s drawer, enraptured by its half-chemical, half-organic odor; nor my obsessions with smells in general, earth, dead rats, even my baby sister’s diaper shit, which made me pleasantly retch; nor that I filched money from my mother for candy and so knew early on I was a thief, a sneak, a liar: none of that convinced me I was “bad,” subversive and perverse, so much as that purveyor of morality—parent, teacher, maybe even treacherous friend—who inculcated the unannulable conviction in me that the most egregious wrong, of which I was clearly already despicably, irredeemably guilty, was my abiding involvement with myself. Even now, only rarely am I able to convince myself that my reluctance to pass on my most secret reflections, meditations, theorizings, all the modes by which I manage to distract myself, arises from my belief that out of my appalling inner universe nothing anyway could possibly be extracted, departicularized, and offered as an instance of anything at all to anyone else.

A world conqueror had appeared in modern times. Alexander, Caesar, Attila, Genghis Khan, Napoleon—another such as these, appearing in the age of electricity, of rotary presses and radio, when nine men out of ten would have said it was impossible. A world conqueror has to be a man of few ideas, and those fixed; a peculiar combination of exactly the right qualities, both good and bad—iron determination, irresistible energy, and no scruples of any sort. He has to know what he wants, and permit no obstacle to stand in the way of his getting it. He has to understand the minds of other men, both foes and friends, and what greeds, fears, hates, jealousies will move them to action. He must understand the mass mind, the ideals or delusions which sway it; he must be enough of a fanatic to talk their language, though not enough to be controlled by it. He must believe in nothing but his own destiny, the glorified image of himself on the screen of history; whole races of mankind made over in his own image and according to his will. To accomplish that purpose he must be liar, thief, and murderer upon a world-wide scale; he must be ready without hesitation to commit every crime his own interest commands, whether upon individuals or nations.

Neither that I picked my nose compulsively, daydreamed through my boring classes, masturbated, once in a condom I stole from my father’s drawer, enraptured by its half-chemical, half-organic odor; nor my obsessions with smells in general, earth, dead rats, even my baby sister’s diaper shit, which made me pleasantly retch; nor that I filched money from my mother for candy and so knew early on I was a thief, a sneak, a liar: none of that convinced me I was “bad,” subversive and perverse, so much as that purveyor of morality—parent, teacher, maybe even treacherous friend—who inculcated the unannulable conviction in me that the most egregious wrong, of which I was clearly already despicably, irredeemably guilty, was my abiding involvement with myself. Even now, only rarely am I able to convince myself that my reluctance to pass on my most secret reflections, meditations, theorizings, all the modes by which I manage to distract myself, arises from my belief that out of my appalling inner universe nothing anyway could possibly be extracted, departicularized, and offered as an instance of anything at all to anyone else. An overrefined sense of generosity, I opine; an unwillingness to presume upon others by hauling them into this barn, this sty, where mental vermin gobble, lust, excrete. Not a lack of sensitivity but a specialization of that lobe of it which most appreciates the unspoken wish of others: to stay free of that rank habitation within me I call “me.” Really, though: to consider one’s splendid self-made self as after all benevolent, propelled by secret altruism? Aren’t I, outer mouth and inner masticating self-excusing sublimations, still really back there in my neither-land? Aren’t I still a thief, stealing from some hoard of language trash to justify my inner stink? Maybe let it go, just let it go.

A liar steals more from you than a thief. And sometimes, what they stole is irreplaceable. And, if you manage to get some back, it's never the same.

A convicted thief was sentenced to have his hand cut off. A liar lost his tongue. Repeated offenders were killed. Banishment was also a common sentence. In spite of these severe laws, songs praised Sundiata for his fairness in dealings with the privileged as well as the poor, the strong as well as the weak.

He might have been a thief and a liar and a cheat, but he was a good person.

Independent Blossoms - 1876-1940 When the spring boughs were told Soon the rose will unfold Herself in the bower Of which she is queen, Their blossoms, beguiling The sad leaves, said smiling : “No slaves to a flower Have we ever been.” Our lords are the birds. And they love not in words ; They sing when we smile And sob when we fall ; Her lord is the liar— The thief or the buyer— Who smells her the while She lives, and that’s all.

Men were expected to handle their own difficulties, and courage was the most respected virtue, with integrity a close second. Many a man whom you might call a thief with impunity would shoot you if you called him a liar or a coward.

Everything has to be Kurt’s: Kurt’s cards, Kurt’s laptop, Kurt’s apartment beneath me with its awful mirror message—but I’m sure Leoni is somehow enmeshed in all of this, too. Did she know about the surveillance and not tell me?

two hands making an offering that can be interpreted three different ways: an apple of knowledge, the poison of a stepmother—or the right way, the secret way, which is a monument to the rebellion of teenage fantasy.

My mother says Koreans have a word for a special kind of grief—han. Han is more than sadness: it’s the aching loss of generations; the righteous, enduring anger of the once-occupied; the desperate yearning and unfathomable sorrow of a people who have had their families decimated and fractured by war.

You? You, help me? Kat, have you seen yourself? You’re fucking insane. You see things in our kitchen. You’re a goddamn stalker. You can’t even take out the garbage without fucking up.

of it matters, though. For the first time in a long time, you’re absolutely free, and you’re back with your family, and you just don’t give a shit about anything else.

I’m a sixty-year-old Indian-American lesbian woman who assumed a man’s name and decided to open a private investigation office instead of getting married and having babies. As far as my parents are concerned, my mental illnesses could eat your mental illnesses for breakfast—they’d much prefer I just saw things.

was Leoni. Tea-Closet Leoni. Clean-the-apartment Leoni. Talk-me-off-a-ledge-on-the-phone Leoni. Somehow, she was involved with Kurt’s jump, his car’s disappearance. No wonder she kept telling me to stay away from him.

felt guilty, but I called and told him I’d come down there and beat his ass myself if he didn’t leave her alone. He apologized profusely.

I’ve heard of couples downsizing when their children leave, but my parents loved being homeowners. It was their favorite part of America, the way a once waitress mother and a band teacher father could somehow buy land. I can’t believe they’d give it up, especially for a splotched ceiling and stained greige carpet.

I already know the answer to the question I’m about to ask—because there’s only one woman who’s been in the middle of this, one woman who’s been manipulating me all along, who’s connected to every point of this mess.

I know this because I can feel myself getting closer to it, the way sharks sense blood in the water, or the way you sometimes know when the phone’s about to ring.

Three years of hurt, balled up and worried at, reinforced and tasted. How could they just cut me out of their life? Why did they wait until I showed up at the school? They had my address this whole time. They could’ve called. Could’ve come. Could’ve sent a postcard.

Don't you understand? Even if you could go back, your house would still be on fire. The Wizard took a long puff of his pipe, and the air around them filled with a soft, purple smoke. If you don't stop him, he'll take over this entire realm. and end life here as we know it. Sometimes, the only way out is through