It was not her fault that when he went to her he was already over. How could a woman know that you meant nothing that you said; that you spoke only from habit and to be comfortable? After he no longer meant what he said, his lies were more successful with women than when he had told them the truth. It was not so much that he lied as that there was no truth to tell.

From “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” by Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway often portrays his stories’ main characters as individuals capable of the utmost cynicism or telling the cruelest truth to someone’s face. He usually doesn’t justify his protagonists’ behavior, but in this case, he did:  “It was not so much that he lied as that there was no truth to tell.”