Cathy's lies were never innocent. Their purpose was to esca… - John Steinbeck

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Cathy's lies were never innocent. Their purpose was to escape punishment, or work, or responsibility, and they were used for profit. Most liars are tripped up either because they forget what they have told or because the lie is suddenly faced with an incontrovertible truth. But Cathy did not forget her lies, and she developed the most effective method of lying. She stayed close enough to the truth so that one could never be sure. She knew two other methods also — either to interlard her lies with truth or to tell a truth as though it were a lie. If one is accused of a lie and it turns out to be the truth, there is a backlog that will last a long time and protect a number of untruths.

John Steinbeck

East of Eden · 2002 Verified in 1 source Sign up to see the complete provenance

liars lying lies 76

English

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About John Steinbeck

John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (27 February 1902 – 20 December 1968) was an American writer. A recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, his works include the novella Of Mice and Men (1937) and the novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 1940), both of which examine the lives of the working class and migrant workers during the Great Depression.

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Also Known As

Birth Name: Jeffery Ernest Steinbeck

Alternative Names: John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. • John Ernst Steinbeck • John Ernest Steinbeck • John Ernst Steinbeck Jr • Steinbeck

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Originators like John Steinbeck:

William Faulkner Ursula K. Le Guin Norman Mailer E. M. Forster Mark Twain

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For it is my opinion that we enclose and celebrate the freaks of our nation and our civilization. Yellowstone National Park is no more representative of America than is Disneyland.

Perhaps that might be the way to write this book — to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.

The remarkable thing,” said Doc, “isn’t that they put their tails up in the air — the really incredibly remarkable thing is that we find it remarkable. We can only use ourselves as yardsticks. If we did something as inexplicable and strange we’d probably be praying — so maybe they’re praying.

Cathy's lies were never innocent. Their purpose was to escape punishment, or work, or responsibility, and they were used for profit. Most liars are t… - John Steinbeck

About John Steinbeck

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Additional quotes by John Steinbeck