The trailer for Wii horror survival game The Grinder has this pretty catchy phrase: “When we were children, our parents told us there were no such things as monsters. They lied.” I just got two things to say about this:

First, I like the line a lot. I’m kinda disappointed that the line was “wasted” on a videogame where these monsters are literally monsters. I thought it would really suit a psychological thriller movie, where the monster was metaphorical and the narrator.

Second, the phrase is so predictable, that it seems like it must be derived from some idiomatic phrase, but all my attempts a googling did not reveal any similar phrase from another source. I don’t know how the people at Language Log are able to find examples of usage for various sentence fragments. I guess that’s why they are the professionals.