Terry Pratchett Quotes About Lying

This is just a little round up of quotes about liars and lying, by Terry Pratchett, who first taught me the art of being a creative and outrageous liar - which is, of course, the greatest and first prequisite to having fun at other people's expense.

So many of his books feature outrageous liars and creative headology - but Going Postal revolves around a conman living a lie, forced to live a new lie and turn it into truth - and explores the art of telling ridiculous untruths that end up being believed a bit more.

"Oh, all right. Of course I accept as a natural born criminal, habitual liar, fraudster and totally untrustworthy perverted genius."

"Capital! Welcome to government service!" said Lord Vetinari, "I pride myself on being able to pick the right man."

"Sometimes the truth is arrived at by adding all the little lies together and deducting them from the totality of what is known."

And the sequel, The Truth, throws in a variation on the quote commonly attributed to Mark Twain:
""A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on""

And scattered through various other books:

"Anyone stupid enough to expect us to trust him in these circumstances must be trustworthy. He'd be too stupid to be deceitful."
Small Gods


"'I'm a world-famous liar.'
 'Is that true?'
 'No.'"
Witches Abroad

"The point is that descriptive writing is very rarely entirely accurate and during the reign of Olaf Quimby II as Patrician of Ankh some legislation was passed in a determined attempt to put a stop to this sort of thing and introduce some honesty into reporting. Thus, if a legend said of a notable here that "all men spoke of his prowess" any bard who valued his life would add hastily "except for a couple of people in his home village who thought he was a liar, and quite a lot of other people who had never really heard of him."
 The Light Fantastic)