The girl was grateful to the young man for every bit of flattery; she wanted to linger for a moment in its warmth and so she said, 'You're very good at lying.''Do I look like a liar?''You look like you enjoy lying to women,' said the girl, and into her words there crept unawares a touch of the old anxiety, because she really did believe that her young man enjoyed lying to women.

It is a tragicomic fact that our proper upbringing has become an ally of the secret police. We do not know how to lie.

It takes so little, so infinitely little, for a person to cross the border beyond which everything loses meaning: love, convictions, faith, history. Human life -- and herein lies its secret -- takes place in the immediate proximity of that border, even in direct contact with it; it is not miles away, but a fraction of an inch.

There would seem to be nothing more obvious, more tangible and palpable than the present moment. And yet it eludes us completely. All the sadness of life lies in that fact. In the course of a single second, our senses of sight, of hearing, of smell, register (knowingly or not) a swarm of events and a parade of sensations and ideas passes through our head. Each instant represents a little universe, irrevocably forgotten in the next instant.

The difference between the university graduate and the autodidact lies not so much in the extent of knowledge as in the extent of vitality and self-confidence.

On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth.

I have to lie, if I don't want to take madmen seriously and become a madman myself

The source of anxiety lies in the future. If you can keep the future out of mind, you can forget your worries.

The worth of a human being lies in the ability to extend oneself, to go outside oneself, to exist in and for other people.