Quotes About Pretense

We have a good arrangement. Roman lies to me and I pretend to believe him.

When we kill people, we feel compelled to pretend that it is for some higher cause. It is this pretence of virtue, I promise you, that will never be forgiven by history.

It came to him then, permeated his disjointed thoughts. Billie was teaching him—him—how to make love. With a jolt of surprise at the crashing irony, Adrian realized he hadn't known how until now. He, the consummate lover, so renown for his sexual skill, so proficient and controlled and practiced, had only played at making love, where Billie…God. Clearly, it was all she knew. Pretense just wasn't in her spectrum of capabilities.

But hypocrisy is established when evil is clearly visible through the fog of rationalization—when rationalization is seen for what it is. So hypocrisy is not an act of evil; it is the pretense of innocence even as one is clearly in league with evil, and with all the duplicities and deceptions that serve evil.

Any time you die in a film, it's not real, so it's all kind of fun.

I don't do so well with people pretending to be happy. When I was 16, I went with my girlfriend at the time and her family to Disneyland and I was so grumpy the whole time.

Mentimos para convencer al mundo, y para convencernos a nosotros mismos, de que somos algo que no somos...

Your small pieties and impenetrable, mostly unconscious poses invariably trip you up.

Waar eindigde zijn geloof en waar begonnen de komedie en de berekening?

Now I think about how much shutting off was required, just to exist in day-to-day experience. You couldn't express shock at everyone dying right in front of your eyes, because shock felt like a form of cruelty. So you would act like everything might be okay, even when nothing was okay.

Did he know that she was so dissatisfied with herself that she was always pretending to be different? Probably he did, and despised her for it. More than anyone she knew, Joe Willard was always, fearlessly, himself.

We're good at lying," Sebastian said, leaning over and managing a smile. "We've been doing it for years.

It all feels so fake that it seems okay.

Well, it's like this: if you're forced into having sex with someone you dislike, you make your mind blank—you pretend to be somewhere else, you tend to forget your body, you hate your body. That's what we do here. We are constantly pretending to be somewhere else—we either plan it or dream it.

Perhaps growing up meant we put our knives away and feigned ignorance of the damage.

He behaves as if he had no dead children. The real Leandro never comes here. He only pretends.

A kid is a terrible thing to be, in charge of nothing. If you get past that and grown, it's easiest to forget about the misery and pretend you knew all along what you were doing.

From what I can tell, the chief distinguishing factor between children and adults is that children hear everything while appearing not to and adults hear nothing while pretending to listen.

There are people we trust absolutely because we know their character. Whether they're eloquent or not, whether they have the human relations techniques or not, we trust them, and we work successfully with them. In the words of William George Jordan, "Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil—the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the constant radiation of what man really is, not what he pretends to be.

Now, the scene you just saw, I began, pointing to the stage. Was about you and T.C., he concluded, nodding like he already knew. What?? She pretends she doesn't like him and he pretends he doesn't care. I had no handy rebuttal to that particular allegation and wouldn't have been able to come up with one if I'd been given a week's notice. So I countered with the only safe reply I could think of. The toilet is not working properly.

Every time we pretend to know something, we are doing the same: protecting our own reputation rather than promoting the collective good. None of us want to look stupid, or at least overmatched, by admitting we don't know an answer.

The impulse to investigate can only be set free if you stop pretending to know answers that you don't. Because the incentives to pretend are so strong, this may require some bravery on your part.

The key to good style, far more than obeying any list of commandments, is to have a clear conception of the make-believe world in which you're pretending to communicate.

Don't throw petals on the floor if they have no meaning. I would rather have a fun, casual relationship than have someone pretending they're completely in love with me.