The easiest person to deceive is sometimes the person who wants your lie to be true.

Deception mostly requires cooperation. When someone tells you what you were already hoping to hear, your own wanting does most of the work, filling in the gaps and dismissing the parts that do not fit. The skill of the liar matters far less than the strength of your preference.

When an offer, an explanation, or an apology feels immediately, wonderfully right, slow down rather than speed up. Ask what you were hoping for before it arrived. That is the exact place where your judgment is thinnest, and a day of waiting costs you very little.