I find that, sometimes, perfectly honest words are interpreted as white lies because they sound like such.

"What are you doing this weekend?" Me (very early in the term) "Studying for midterms."

"Let's be just friends from now on, okay?"

"You're a wonderful person, and I wish you the best of luck."

On another topic, I find myself lying, not to protect others' feelings but out of cowardice, to hide misdeeds, especially those that I irrationally didn't expect anyone to notice. The worst instances have involved frequent and compulsive food theft, and the occasional sneaking "improvements" into the minutes of a meeting or the report of an interview. Worst of all, for a rationalist, I tend to lie to myself, specifically by hiding my head in the sand and refusing to check on something that I expect will yield inconvenient truths, such as the state of my bank account, or whether I'm late in returning my books to the library. I feel that both kinds of lying are part of a same phenomenon of cowardice that I have yet to understand and resolve... Could it be as simple as "suck it up"?