From Kissinger by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schyster, 2005), p. 131. This sentence appears after the author has presented several rival versions of an incident during the 1968 presidential election campaign:
“Where does the truth in fact lie?”
Beautiful. Where is the truth? Or where does the truth tell a lie?
What Paul de Man could do with this sentence! Professor Joel Cairo, a circuit judge of the Food Court, explains that it is “a perfect example of two antithetical meanings: ‘What is the truth [of the matter]?’ versus 'where [in what circumstances] does the truth become a lie thanks, perhaps, to the agency of fact, that seemingly hard but notably elastic thing [or word]?’ Caspar Gutmann wondered: ‘Are there invisible hyphens linking the words truth-in-fact? And what then?’"
You know what I think?
No, what do you think.
It ranks right up there with Kissinger's assessment of the Iraq war in 2003:
"It all depends on how it ends."
Perfect iambic tetrameter.
— DL