Quotes About Pretense

Bits are fake conversations comedians have because they are uncomfortable being vulnerable with other human beings in any way.

Acting is trying to be absolutely truthful; to get audiences to believe that you are a dean, when, actually, not only are you not the dean, but if you walked into the building they'd probably throw you out. That's very hard.

You've can play the game, by all means play the game because that's what it is. But if you think you can act your whole way through 'Big Brother' you shouldn't be in Borehamwood, you should be in Hollywood.

Playing dead is difficult with a full bladder.

I hate all those celebrity sculptures like Tussauds, where everyone is dressed in spangly suits and they are all smiling.

As an actor, you are used to portraying other characters. You can pick up any mannerism or body language that suits the character. But to be yourself and not look pretentious is a difficult thing to do.

L.A. is so fake - girls there are so superficial.

If no one else, the dying must notice how unreal, how full of pretense, is all that we accomplish here, where nothing is allowed to be itself.

The world is his who can see through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold, is there only by sufferance,--by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow.

Pomp and pretense have nothing to do with thought and knowledge. Gowns and diplomas cannot impart the least syllable of wisdom. Forget this, and our American universities will be impoverished even as they amass riches from their students and benefactors.

The whole thing was a charade--the pomp, the ceremony, the goose-stepping. the salute--but the incredible cost was very real.

It's a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not.

It is the privilege of old people to seem to know everything. But it's an act and a mask, like every other act and mask. Between ourselves, we old ones wink at each other and smile, saying, How do you like my mask, my act, my certainty? Isn't life a play? Don't I play it well?

It was unreal as everything else--as the philanthropic pretense of the whole concern, as their government, as their show of work.

It was unreal as everything else--as the philanthropic pretense of the whole concern, as their talk, as their government, as their show of work. The only real feeling was a desire to get appointed to a trading post where ivory was to be had, so that they could earn percentages.

What could you do? Major Major asked himself again. What could you do with a man who looked you squarely in the eye and said he would rather die than be killed in combat, a man who was at least as mature and intelligent as you were and who you had to pretend was not? What could you say to him?

Know what 'celebrity' is kid? Being paid to bullshit the rest of your natural life.

On the way home Mary Lou said, Some things are so sad you can't say them. But I pretended not to hear.

But so like Hollywood people, who played at the emotions they truly felt. Or maybe the emotions they truly felt could only be expressed in play?

Você pode fingir ser quase tudo que não é, há pouquíssimas coisas que de fato se pode ser.

I'd always hated cocktail parties. And this one was worse than most. Overdressed pseudo–people smiled plastic smiles, told one–upmanship stories with phony self–deprecation, then half–listened with painted–on sincerity to the one–upmanship rebuttals. Mannequins. Robots. Androids. Pseudo–people laboring in the vineyards of pseudo–intellectualism to gather the bitter grapes of self–aggrandizement.

It is too embarrassing to name and own one's deep failings; as long as they are unvoiced, we may be allowed to pretend it is not so.

There were things that nothing could make right. They stayed hidden as black holes inside of you. You went on the best you could, pretending everything was fine.

Nobody, said Humboldt, had a destiny. One simply decided to feign one until one came to believe in it oneself. But so many things didn't fit in with it, one had to really force oneself.