Why do we tell lies? We lie because the truth is too painful or too shameful for us to face, or because the truth is simply inconvenient and has to be suppressed before its allowed to disturb us. We invent lies because, for whatever reason, we want to invent reality. And the false reality which we invent, the world we make up by our lying, has one great advantage for us: It makes no claim on us. It demands nothing. It doesnt shape us in the way that truth shapes us; it faces us with no obligations; it has no hard, resistant surfaces which we cant get through. A lie is a made-up reality, and so never unsettles, never criticizes, never resists, never overthrows us. Its the world, not as it is, but as we wish it to be: a world organized around us and our desires, the perfect environment in which we can be left at peace to be ourselves and to follow our own good or evil purposes.
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About John Webster
John Webster was English playwright (c. 1580 – c. 1632). John Webster was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which are often seen as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. His life and career overlapped with Shakespeare's. Read more on Wikipedia →