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If you lie to your husband - even about something so banal as how much you drink - each lie is a brick in a wall going up between you, and when he tells you he loves you, it's deflected away.
Mary Karr
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Lying creates barriers in relationships, impacting emotional connections.

This quote emphasizes the detrimental influence of dishonesty on intimate relationships. Even seemingly trivial lies contribute to a growing distance between partners, ultimately affecting the authenticity of their love and communication. Trust, once eroded, makes genuine expressions of affection feel insincere and deflected, highlighting the importance of honesty in maintaining close bonds.

Themes

LiesTrustRelationshipsHonestyCommunication

In practice

Example use cases

In a marriage counseling session, a therapist might use this quote to illustrate the impact of dishonesty.

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There's a space at the bottom of an exhale, a little hitch between taking in and letting out that's a perfect zero you can go into. There's a rest point between the heart muscle's close and open - an instant of keenest living when you're momentarily dead. You can rest there.
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Mother’s particular devils had remained mysterious to me for decades. So had her past. Few born liars ever intentionally embark in truth’s direction, even those who believe that such a journey might axiomatically set them free.
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Childhood was terrifying for me. A kid has no control. You're three feet tall, flat broke, unemployed, and illiterate. Terror snaps you awake. You pay keen attention. People can just pick you up and move you and put you down.
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Reading is socially accepted disassociation. You flip a switch and you’re not there anymore. It’s better than heroin. More effective and cheaper and legal.
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