Quote 88
And anyway, Orion is not a hunter or a coffee maker or a dinosaur. It is just Betelgeuse and Bellatrix and Alnilam and Rigel and 17 other stars I don't know the names of. And they are nuclear explosions billions of miles away.
And that is the truth. (173.5-6)
What does this mean, "And that is the truth"? Just what is he calling a lie here? It's true that the stars in the constellation Orion aren't really connected out there in the cosmos – of course not. If he's talking about the thing <em>we</em> call Orion, well that's a story we've created that connects those stars in a meaningful way – it's a hunter, not a coffee maker. It's a little unfair for Christopher to demean that story by saying it isn't "the truth."
Quote 89
And then I didn't know what to say because I had Father's cashpoint card in my pocket and it was illegal to steal things, but he was a policeman so I had to tell the truth, so I said, "I have a cashpoint card," and I took it out of my pocket and I showed it to him. And this was a white lie. (191.47)
What does he mean that he has to tell the truth because he's a policeman? We thought he always told the truth! Since when is he prepared to lie otherwise? And, wait, why does he have to tell the truth to policemen – because he got a caution for hitting a policeman and is worried about getting in trouble? Or is there something else about the policeman that prevents him from lying? It certainly can't be that, because he ends up lying to him anyway. Sure, he passes it off as "a white lie," but, hey, that still has "lie" in the title, doesn't it?