How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Then they began to construct the story that they would tell their acquaintances and those relatives who were not close or whose prejudices did not allow for mental hospitals in the family [...] the look of the place would have to change in the telling and the high, hard scream that they had heard from one of the barred windows as they left, and that had made them shiver and grit their teeth, would have to be expunged. (2.11)
Jacob and Ester construct a cover story about Deborah that they will use when talking to people in their social circle. They'll also use it the family members who would freak out at the mere mention of a mental hospital. When Deborah eventually goes home to visit, she sees how her parents lied to all these people about the truth of her illness and it hinders her progress. How would these kinds of lies make you feel?
Quote #2
Again the transparent lie about the doll. What terrible scorn they had had to give that lie so often! […] the doctor's face was heavy with anger and her voice full of indignation for the five-year-old who stood before them both. "Those damn fools! When will they learn not to lie to children!" (6.10-12)
The doctors who operate on Deborah when she's five tell her she's in Dreamland instead of being honest with her and explaining that she's in a hospital, and that they are going to perform and operation to remove a tumor from her urethra. Instead, they tell her they are going to put her "doll" to sleep and that it won't hurt. Um, ew.
Even at five, Deb is cognizant enough to know that her vagina and urethra are not a doll, and she's insulted not only by the euphemism but also by the searing pain she feels after she has assured nothing will hurt. This is the beginning of Deborah's hatred for lying of any kind. Dr. Fried is upset just hearing Deborah tell this story, and that's one of the reasons Deborah grows to trust and respect Dr. Fried.
Quote #3
Deborah suddenly knew what was good about D ward: no more lying gentility or need to live according to the incomprehensible rules of Earth. (7.7)
When Deborah gets to D ward, she senses there's something good there, but she can't put her finger on what it is at first. Then she realizes that what's good about D ward is the fact that no one hides or lies about their illness there. It's all out in the open.
Quote #4
"It doesn't hurt—don't worry." Watch out for those words…they are the same words. What comes after those words is deceit, and…The stroke from the tumor made her writhe on the floor. A bursting vein of terror released itself and then there was the darkness, even beyond the power of Yr. (7.36-37)
When a staff member of the hospital explains what a cold-sheet pack is, Deborah immediately distrusts the words and has a violent reaction. She was told the same thing about her tumor operation, and that lie caused her to continue to feel the pain of the tumor long after it was removed.
Quote #5
The director gave an impassioned speech about a "liar in our midst who uses her religion to get pity and involve innocent girls in trouble—one among us who would stoop to any evil, any dishonor." He would not mention names, he said, but they all knew who it was. (8.15)
Deborah is at summer camp when a fellow camper calls her a "stinking Jew." When she gets the name of the guilty camper wrong, the counselors call her a liar. This incident reinforces the negative stories Deborah tells herself about being poisonous and hopeless. In fact, one of her Yri nicknames is "The Always Deceived."
Quote #6
"How many times does one tell the truth and die for it!" (9.25)
Deborah is exasperated by the feeling that she has been pressured by her classmates into renouncing her artistic ability. When Dr. Fried tries to get her to see that she didn't publicly claim her art in front of her classmates out of fear of rejection, Deborah dismisses the suggestion. She's convinced that if she did tell the kids the picture they found was hers, they would have made fun of it or rejected her in some way. But the truth is that she doesn't know that; it's just an assumption.
Quote #7
Deborah knew that they must have taken the naked fact and buried it hurriedly somewhere, like carrion. But she knew well how the stench of a buried lie purses the guilty, hanging in the air they breathe until everything smells of it, rancid and corrupting. (10.54)
These are Deborah's thoughts when Dr. Fried tries to get her to see that she didn't really try to kill her baby sister. Deborah protests against Dr. Fried's suggestion: she believes in the truth of her own guilt. She thinks that her parents have never spoken about catching her in the act because they always bury unpleasant things and put on happy faces. Deborah can convince herself of anything if it upholds her image of herself as a terrible person.
Quote #8
"It was a wiling soil then, to which this seed of Yr came," the doctor said. "The deceits of the grown-up world, the great gap between Grandfather's pretensions and the world you saw more clearly, the lies told by your own precocity, that you were special, and the hard fact that you couldn't get to first base with your own contemporaries no matter how impressive your specialness was." (12.9)
These are Dr. Fried's observations on the birth of Yr and its connection to Deborah's feelings about lies. It's complicated. Pop told Deborah she was awesome, but the world told Deborah she was a "stinking Jew." Her father told her that "sex maniacs" wanted to hurt her—and that just by being a girl, she was guilty for making them want to do that. Yr was a better alternative to the awful stuff Deborah saw and heard about going on around her.
Quote #9
"You were asked to mistrust even the reality to which you were closest and which you could discern as clearly as daylight. Small wonder that mental patients have so low a tolerance for lies." (17.90)
Dr. Fried understands that Deborah has so little tolerance of lying because she knew all along, deep down, that she was sick—but no one around her wanted to admit it, especially her parents.
Quote #10
[…] it seemed to Deborah that Suzy had somehow darkened over these two days. She had been free to go out and leave the prodigal elder sister to all the praises, but she had stayed. Was it perhaps the virulence after all—the slow poison of Deborahness which conscious will told her did not exist, but which still whispered, "They lie! They lie!" deep in the places beneath logic and will. (25.33)
Deborah relapses a bit at home when she realizes Suzy is lying about wanting to hang out with her instead of with her friends. It makes Deborah think negative thoughts again: she starts the believe that she's poisonous and a detriment to others.