A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written.

A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.

Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons.

Did I choose this life of illusion? Don't be mad. My bed was made, I just lied in it.

He wished he could've explained some of this. How he had been braver than he ever thought possible, but how he had not been so brave as he wanted to be. The distinction was important.

It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do.

We are fascinated, all of us, by the implacable otherness of others. And we wish to penetrate by hypothesis, by daydream, by scientific investigation those leaden walls that encase the human spirit, that define it and guard it and hold it forever inaccessible.