The Little Liar

by Mitch Albom

In a world full of lies, honesty glimmers like silver foil reflecting the sun.

But just as ignoring proper food will ultimately decay your body, so will handpicking the Truth eventually rot your soul.

“When you do something for someone that can never be repaid. Like cleaning the graves of the dead. That is a true and loving kindness.” He lowers his voice. “It’s easy to be nice when you get something in return. It’s harder when nobody knows the good you are doing except yourself.”

Of all the lies you tell yourself, perhaps the most common is that, if you only do this or that, you will be accepted. It affects your behavior with classmates, neighbors, colleagues, lovers. Humans do a great deal to be liked. They are needier than I can comprehend. I will tell you this much: it is often futile. The truth is (there I go, referencing myself) people ultimately see through efforts to impress them. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower, but they do.

“A man, to be forgiven, will do anything,” he said.

Of course, this meant concealment. Evil seeks the dark. Not because it is ashamed. Darkness is simply more efficient. Fewer complications. Less outrage.

It was a ritual they had established, at the urging of Lazarre, not to forget their past, their faith, their God. Lying in their filthy bunks, they mumbled the words softly in the darkness while a fellow prisoner coughed purposely to prevent the guards from hearing them. When they finished, Lazarre, now a skeletal version of his old thick self, would ask everyone to recite one thing they were grateful for that day. “I had an extra spoonful of soup,” one man said. “My rotted tooth finally fell out,” said another. “I wasn’t beaten.” “My foot stopped bleeding.” “I slept through the night.” “The guard that was torturing me got switched to another block.” “I saw a bird.”

But you serve the Lord or you serve man, and if you choose man, there may be no limit to the orders you will have to follow, or your cruelty.

“Never be ashamed of a scar. In the end, scars tell the story of our lives, everything that hurt us, and everything that healed us.”

“I love you, son.” Sebastian shivered. He thought about those words, and the many times he’d wished his father would say them to him. Now, however, words were no longer critical. Food was. Water was. Avoiding the guards’ gaze was. It is a sad fact I have noticed with humans. By the time you share what a loved one longs to hear, they often no longer need it.

“Always remember this,” he said. “Si khohaimo may pachivalo sar o chachimo.” “What does it mean?” Nico asked. “‘Some lies are easier to believe than the truth.’”

She had been hiding for so long, freedom felt like its own prison.

One afternoon, during his time with Katalin Karády, Nico had asked why she’d chosen to be an actress. “Because I can disappear,” she said. “I can hide inside someone else. I can cry their tears, scream their curses, love their loves, but when the day is over, none of it touches me. “I get the experience without the pain.”

You have debated for centuries about what true love means. Some say it is when another’s happiness means more to you than your own. Others say it is when you cannot imagine the world without your partner. For me, true love is easy. It’s the kind where you do not lie to yourself.

The truth of love is that when it fades away, you don’t really care less. You don’t care at all.

Fannie apologized so many times that Gizella forbade her to use the words “I’m sorry,” insisting that the war had so many victims, just being alive was something to celebrate.

“Do you know what the Talmud says about saving a life?” Fannie nodded. “If you save one, it’s as if you saved the whole world.”

To keep harmony, there are things you might not say, even if you know them to be accurate. It is, technically, an act of deceit. It is also an act of love. The two are more connected than you think.

Seeing the devil and capturing him were two different things.

When you lie about everything, you belong to nothing.

And so, for a while, they exchanged a rare kindness: the kindness of silence. They worked side by side in the present, and let the past sleep undisturbed.

The heart has many routes to love, and compassion is one of them.