I opted to stop for a moment, though I have spent months self-censoring this whole, miserable mess. I decided to run a personal buzzer system. Every time I could catch Hyde lying or hypocritizing, I would go, Bzz. Well, my teeth got cold and my ears started to ring from all the buzzing in three minutes and 38 seconds. Hyde s speech was a delusion, a self-serving deceit, deliberate untruth relying on ignorance for success.
Truth is the thing.
Whether it helps, whether it hurts, whether it fits like a glove, whether it ruins the line, whether politically correct, whether downright rude, whether it comes when you whistle, whether it runs like a thief Truth is the thing. As Ellis Peters once wrote, Truth can be costly, but in the end it never falls short of value for the price paid. The author of the Brother Cadfael mysteries about a medieval monk who detects crimes from a garden in a Shrewsbury abbey. So all my quotes don t come straight out of Bartlett s Familiar Quotations, but that s another thing. Truth is no respecter of persons.