How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Some people can lie, and some people can't. My father was a world-class liar, for instance. We never suspected a thing until the day of the Talbots dress. (8.15)
We hate to say this, Pearl, but the lying apple doesn't fall too far from the tree. Sure her dad's deception is major doozy, but Pearl's a pretty swift liar herself.
Quote #2
I watched the dirt road where Amiel still wasn't riding in on his bicycle, and I touched the folded note that I hoped said, Where did you learn to juggle? not, Where did you learn to deceive? (11.34)
The words "juggle"and "deceive"are similar in Spanish, which worries Pearl. What if she asked Amiel about his lies instead of asking him about something far more casual like his circus talents? The slip is a very telling one, though: It turns out Amiel is deceiving people, by hiding out from the police and living illegally in the woods.
Quote #3
"Then you've probably eaten a ray. Restaurants cut them with a cookie cutter, see, and call them scallops." (15.22)
Ew… When we order scallops, we want to know that they are actually scallops and not stingrays. Robby, Pearl, and her mom all feel the same. Something doesn't sit right with them about restaurants claiming they are serving one thing when they're really serving another, but Pearl's dad—who turns out to be a liar—has no problem with it at all.
Quote #4
That was the thing that gave Uncle Hoyt real substance, the fact that he always looked like he was weighing your moral fitness and expecting the very best you could be, no lies or cowardice, and giving you the same. How could I have been wrong about him? (15.38)
Once Pearl finds out about her uncle's affair, she questions everything she knows about Hoyt. She wonders how someone who is so honest and open could be the biggest deceiver of all; it doesn't make sense to her. Of course, we later learn that Hoyt isn't actually cheating on Agnès, which explains everything.
Quote #5
Looking back, I see that I was beginning my practice with lies, preparing unconsciously for the day four months in the future when the fire would jump from tree to tree and roof to roof and I would head straight to the woods, to Amiel, to a house no fireman would think to defend but where all that I had come to love was in danger of burning alive. (18.23)
Pearl knows that she's lying more and more to get what she wants. At the time, she doesn't think much of it, but later on, Pearl recognizes that her pattern of behavior is characterized by deceiving her mom, and she knows that isn't right.
Quote #6
The project I'd told my father about was half-truth, half lie. We had nine days of school left, and four of them would be devoted to tests. (28.19)
Here's the thing: Pearl doesn't feel guilty over lying to her dad in the same way she does for lying to her mom. Perhaps that's because her dad lied to them big time. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that her dad's never around anymore. Either way, it seems that it's not necessarily the principle of lying that bothers Pearl; it's whom she lies to and why.
Quote #7
"It's true, though," I said. "There is absolutely nothing between us." I said it with enough misery in my face, I suppose, that she believed me. "I have to go," I said. (32.14)
At first, Agnès doesn't believe one word Pearl says about Amiel—she can tell that something is going on between those two, even if no one will admit it—but eventually she gives up. Pearl, on the other hand, lies to herself to make the situation go away.
Quote #8
It crossed my mind to say, He saw you kissing my uncle. Or, He wanted to stop you from breaking up his parents' marriage. I should have said these things, I think now, but I didn't, which made me wonder if I was losing my compulsive honesty now that I spent most of my time leading a secret life. (37.36)
Pearl thinks about what she'd like to say to Mary Beth, but doesn't go through with it. We're more interested in the way that she describes her romance with Amiel as a "secret life." She's so used to lying now that she doesn't even know how to be completely honest with people anymore.
Quote #9
My ability to lie was like my ability to speak Spanish. I didn't have the speed, the fluency, or the verb tenses. "I just, yeah, I had to." (44.41)
On the phone to her mom, Pearl knows she isn't lying very well. And you know what? She doesn't really care. She's already made her choice to go to the woods after Amiel, and she figures her mom will just have to deal with it.
Quote #10
It keeps you from stumbling through another set of half lies to explain to your mother why you're walking to a ruined house with a boy who's more afraid of police than of wildfires. (44.49)
Her dead phone might give her a brief reprieve, but it doesn't solve the problem entirely; it's more of a bandage. Pearl likes to think of her lies as "half lies" so they don't seem as bad, but the truth is that she's been straight-up lying to her mom for months. Some pills are tough to swallow.