Quotes About Deception

The world wasn't real anymore. Everything in it was a fraudulent copy of what it should have been, and everything that happened in it shouldn't have been happening. For a long time afterward, Ferguson lived under the spell of this illusion, sleepwalking through his days and struggling to fall asleep at night, sick of a world he had stopped believing in, doubting everything that presented itself to his eyes.

Con men and tricksters run the world. Rascals rule. And do you know why? because they are hungier than we are. because they know what they want. because they believe in life more than we do.

No one wants to be part of a fiction, and even less so if that fiction is real.

What people saw when he appeared before them, then, was not really him, but a person he had invented, an artificial creature he could manipulate in order to manipulate others. He himself remained invisible, a puppeteer working the strings of his alter-ego from a dark, solitary place behind the curtain

The great spectacle of human crookedness. It keeps coming at you from all sides, and whether you like it or not, it's the most interesting show in town.

Una mentira nunca puede deshacerse. Ni siquiera la verdad es suficiente.

Hepimiz hikayeler dinlemek isteriz, t?pk? çocukken oldu?u gibi dinleriz anlat?lanlar?. Gerçek hikayeyi sözcüklerin içinde hayal ederiz, bunu yapmak için de hikayedeki ki?inin yerine koyar?z kendimizi, kendimizi anlad???m?z için onu da anlarm?? gibi yapar?z. Bu bir kand?rmacad?r.

As long as we avoided the real subject, the spell could not be broken. We both slipped naturally into this kind of banter, and it became all the more powerful because neither of us abandoned the charade. We knew what we were doing, but at the same time we pretended not to.

These are treacherous times, and I know how easily perceptions can be twisted by a single word spoken into the wrong ear. Impugn a man's character, and everything that man does is made to seem underhanded, suspect, fraught with double motives.

But even the facts do not always tell the truth.

The book was a work of fiction. Even though it was based on facts, it could tell nothing but lies. I signed the contract, and afterwards I felt like a man who had signed away his soul.

Quién eres tú? Y si crees que lo sabes, ¿por qué insistes en mentir al respecto?

Tout cela devient assez compliqué, je m'en doute, mais en réalité le personnage de Brill ne faisait pas, à l'origine, partie de mon plan. Le cerveau créateur de la guerre devait appartenir à quelqu'un d'autre, un autre personnage inventé, aussi peu réel que Brick et Flora, Tobak et tout le reste, mais plus j'avançais, mieux je comprenais à quel point je me bernais moi-même.

If people never learned the truth about him, then they couldn't turn around and use it against him. The lie was a way of buying protection.

La única persona con la que sabía cómo comportarme era conmigo mismo; pero verdaderamente yo ya no era nadie, no estaba realmente vivo. Sólo era alguien que fingía estar vivo, un muerto que

I sit in a thickly padded char that, much like this country, isn't quite as comfortable as it looks.

I sit in a thickly padded chair that, much like this country, isn't quite as comfortable as it looks.

If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.

People eat the shit you shovel them.

Hereos. Idols. They're never who you think they are. Shorter. Nastier. Smellier. And when you finally meet them, there's something that makes you want to choke the shit out of them.

Paul Rozin's discoveries that people often refuse to drink soup from a brand-new bedpan, eat fudge shaped like feces, or put an empty gun to their head and pull the trigger. As Tamar Gendler points out, the mind works on two tracks. We know, consciously, that the bedpan is clean, the fudge is fudge, the gun is empty, and yet we can't help blurring the imagined and reality; our minds scream, "Dangerous object! Stay away!

for although he is said to be a liar from the beginning, not one case is known, in all devil-lore in which the Devil attempts to cheat his stipulators. Thus he appears as the most unfairly maligned person, and as a martyr of simple-minded honesty.

Yes, me, I prefer the hourglass so you can smash it when I tell you of eternity's lie —Paul Celan, "[Blinded by giant leaps]," Romanian Poems (Green Integer, 2003)

Así pues átate la máscara y píntate de verde las pestañas.