Quotes About Deception

Sincerity: if you can fake it, you've got it made.

My grandmother's first husband was a spiritualist medium. What fascinates me about that is the balance between conviction and sincerity and trickery, which is also something that novelists are very familiar with.

The devil doesn't know how to sing, only how to howl.

A single moment spent in a business meeting or at a pub is more than enough to reveal the basic human truth that we are all faking it most of the time.

A politician is the devil's quilted anvil; He fashions all sins on him, and the blows are never heard.

The broad outlines of the Double Cross deception have been known since 1972, when Sir John Masterman, the former chairman of the double agent committee, controversially published his account of the operation in defiance of official secrecy.

How long can you gloss everything over and give people the idea that life is a sitcom?

Sitcoms are bad in so many ways it's hard to say why. They can hype things as much as they want, but it's all crap, no matter how many TV Guide cover stories there are.

Anyone who has to have the word 'charming' in their name probably isn't - just take a look at any dating site where men use 'prince charming' in their description.

Journalists, who are skeptical to begin with, simply do not like to be lied to or made fools of.

Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.

Good liars are skilled at reading others well, putting them at ease, managing their own emotions, and intuitively sensing how others perceive them.

I think people involved in politics make good actors. Acting and politics both involve fooling people. People like being fooled by actors. When you get right down to it, they probably like being fooled by politicians even more. A skillful actor will make you think, but a skillful politician will make you never have to think.

It's true that the skills required to be a conman are the same as those required for being an actor. Though those skills are in the service of something a bit more noble with acting, I hope.

Beauty is only skin deep.

The fellow that agrees with everything you say is either a fool or he is getting ready to skin you.

Civilization is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades.

I've been in the ring with big-muscled heavyweights and cruiserweights, who couldn't punch the skin off a rice pudding, and then I've taken on light welterweights and light middleweights, and they hit hard, and you can see they're not trying.

Life in the movie business is like the beginning of a new love affair: it's full of surprises, and you're constantly getting f***ed.

Interest, ambition, fortune, time, temper, love, all kill friendship.

You can't fool people into loving you.

The problem with falling in love is falling back out of it again, usually because you've fallen in love with a lie. That happens as often as not.

Only yesterday a young woman came to me wanting a trap set for a man with a sweet smile and lithe arms. She was a fool, not for wanting him, but for wanting more of him than that.

The guy who broke up with me... he was exactly like you, in the beginning. Charming, and nice. They're all like you in the beginning. But I always end up like this. And I can't do it anymore.