Quotes About Manipulation

Everyone believed him of course, but you always knew with Salome that if anyone's head was going to roll it wouldn't be hers.

Zenia has stolen something from him, the one thing he always kept safe before, from all women, even from Roz. Call it his soul. She slipped it out of his breast pocket when he wasn't looking, easy as rolling a drunk, and looked at it, and bit it to see if it was genuine, and sneered at it for being so small after all, and then tossed it away, because she's the kind of woman who wants what she doesn't have and gets what she wants and then despises what she gets. What

But by that time Janine was like a puppy that's been kicked too often, by too many people, at random: she'd roll over for anyone, she'd tell anything, just for a moment of approbation. (...) Janine looked down at the floor. Whatever it was, she knew she would not be blamed for it, she was blameless. But what use had that been to her in the past, to be blameless? So at the same time she felt guilty, and as if she was about to be punished.

A man is just a woman's strategy for making other women. Not

She was so pliable. He could do anything with her, arrange her as he pleased, and she would say yes. Not just yes. Oh yes!

All that speech-making can bloat a man up. I've watched the process, many times now. It's those kinds of words, the kind they use in speeches. They have a fermenting effect on the brain. You can see it on television, during the political broadcasts - the words coming out of their mouths like bubbles of gas.

But if Crake wanted her to stay longer on any given night, do it again maybe, she'd make some excuse—jet lag, a headache, something plausible. Her inventions were seamless, she was the best poker-faced liar in the world, so there would be a kiss goodbye for stupid Crake, a smile, a wave, a closed door, and the next minute there she would be, with Jimmy.

I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before. You do that first, in your head, and then you make it real. So that's how they do it, I thought. I seemed never to have known that before.

She must have been annoyed that it no longer worked. One morning he looked down and it was gone. I expect she'd pointed at it when he was asleep. She was keeping it in a cedar box with some other penises she'd stolen; she was feeding them on grains of wheat. That's the usual method of tending penises.

Then, when he was exhausted, she stole his penis.

Ed, knows power corrupts, they'll have experienced that first-hand. They'll see how I'd be tempted to use my own power for personal reasons. They may not approve of that, but they'll buy

I hope she won't destroy him, thought Felix. But he's a con man, don't forget. A con man playing an actor. A double unreality.

Tonight I have a little surprise for you," he says. He laughs; it's more like a snigger. I notice that everything this evening is little. He wishes to diminish things, myself included.

She wished him to owe his recovery to her alone – to her care, to her tireless devotion. That is the other side of selflessness: its tyranny.

Languor is a more efficient method of control.

The books I was given to learn from were about a boy and a girl called Dick and Jane. The books were very old, and the pictures had been altered at Ardua Hall. Jane wore long skirts and sleeves, but you could tell from the places where the paint had been applied that her skirt had once been above her knees and her sleeves had ended above her elbows. Her hair had once been uncovered.

Men are sex machines, said Aunt Lydia, and not much more. They only want one thing. You must learn to manipulate them, for your own good. Lead them around by the nose; that is a metaphor. It's nature's way. It's God's device. It's the way things are.

As for the adverse publicity, they could squelch it at source, since the media Corps controlled what was news and what wasn't. And the Internet was such a jumble of false and true factoids that no one believed what was on it any more, or else they believed all of it, which amounted to the same thing.

He was always so plausible. Many people have believed that his version of events was the true one, give or take a few murders, a few beautiful seduct­resses, a few one-eyed monsters. Even I believed him, from time to time. I knew he was tricky and a liar, I just didn't think he would play his tricks and try out his lies on me.

Never trust a writer, he had warned me. All the world is ours to kidnap and transform as we will, to our own purpose.

British would use every means from persuasion to bribery in Morocco and when those failed the wives of British diplomats knew what they had to do to further Britain's interests.

I'm tempting you with fine gifts until your girlish ideals are quite worn away and you are at my mercy.

Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.

Yes, life was very sweet and cosy with Scarlett - as long as she had her own way