Quotes About Deception

Emily looked into his eyes. They were blank, unreadable. That was the worst kind of person, the scariest—the one who'd learned to keep his feelings out of his eyes. Or who didn't feel anything at all. Emily had known people like that; they were the destroyers. They took things—everything you worked for, all your silly dreams—and smashed them beneath their boots for no reason at all.

I should have been sending up flares, instead I was offering smiles.

It was human nature to see only what you want to see, and nothing would change that, no matter what tools people had at their disposal. The truth is only what you think it is.

Love, a promise delivered already broken.

Didn't he know that she was playing him? The funny thing was that they almost never, ever did. And even after they figured it out, they doubted themselves. Wanted to believe they were wrong. Even when there was no denying that they'd been had, you could almost always go back for a second helping.

She told me I didn't understand depression, how it was a con and a thief of joy. How it lured people away, making them believe that the world was better off without them.

From where I stand, hidden, watching them through the glass, they are the picture of the perfect family. But I know better. What people show the world is rarely the whole truth, especially these days when everything must be curated and cropped, filtered and brightened. Real life is messy and complicated. Ugly.

She'd spun a web around Maggie's son without his knowing it, without even perhaps her intention. Spider silk was stronger than chain if you happened to be a fly. There

While Birdie was a guest in their home, the Crosses would find her irresistibly charming, impeccably well mannered, and delightfully funny. But when they were out of earshot once again, Birdie would tell Kate in unsparing detail what she really thought. Birdie Burke took merciless measure.

Maybe we're all so confused these days about what's real and what isn't, what's authentic, what's fake, that our instincts for the truth have been dulled.

She scrolled through page one, page two, page three—the way her brother had taught her. Sometimes the things you want to know are buried deep—fixers and hiders have gotten very good at burying bad press deep beyond where anyone has the attention span to look.

A Separate Peace by John Knowles. Seminal coming-of-age tale. Intense adolescent friendship gone awry. Having to face yourself because of your own ugly deeds. Did Gene bounce the branch on purpose? Of course he did. Whether he realized it or not. No one else in class wanted to believe it. "It was an accident," the pert and pretty Jenna said. She sounded almost desperate. "He couldn't. He just wouldn't. They

That's how predators work. They give vulnerable people what they want or need, at first. They see a need, a desire, then they exploit, manipulate. When you're hooked, that's when the abuse starts.

The nanny you let into your home seduces your husband, sets fire to your life. And all because you wanted to work and be a mother.

Real life is what happens between those posts. And you only know the version people show you on Instagram. It's a fiction. And I guarantee every single one of those perfect people you see out there is feeling as lost and insecure as you are.

How can you desire someone who hurts you? How can you miss him so much your body aches? Maybe not him, the man he actually was, but the man I thought he was. We cling to our ideas of people, don't we? We hold on tight even when all evidence points to something else.

We cling to our ideas of people, don't we? We hold on tight even when all evidence points to something else.

She watched. That was her gift. To disappear into the black, sink into the shadows behind and between. That's where you really saw things for what they were, when people revealed their true natures, Everyone was on broadcast these days, thrusting out versions of themselves, cropped and filtered for public consumption. Everyone putting on the show of me. It was when people were alone, unobserved, that the mask came off

The truth was no way to make a good first impression.

You thought we were the most outstanding students in our freshman class. You were wrong. We are pretenders.

We are pretenders.

You plant a seed thinking it's love. It's only when the thing starts putting down roots that you realise it's not growing the way it should. But by then it's too late. It has sprouted foliage, blossomed and borne demented fruit. What do you do with the sickness in you?

I try to imagine keeping something like that a secret for my whole life. It would be like always wearing a mask over your face, which everyone believed was the real you. You would be the only person who knew it wasn't--and who knew that you could never take it off.

One way everything looks all right, the other way, it looks all wrong.