Lies are usually attempts to make everything simpler--for the liar--than
it really is, or ought to be.
In lying to others we end up lying to ourselves. We deny the importance
of an event, or a person, and thus deprive ourselves of a part of our
lives. Or we use one piece of the past or present to screen out another.
Thus we lose faith even with our own lives.
-- Adrienne Rich.
(From "Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying," first read at the Hartwick
Women Writers' Workshop in June of 1975 and eventually reprinted in On
Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978)