Best 169 quotes in «pretending quotes» category

Vampires pretending to be humans pretending to be vampires ... How avant-garde!

Wearing a mask wears you out. Faking it is fatiguing. The most exhausting activity is pretending to be what you know you aren't.

You can't have a tin can tied to your tail and go through life pretending it isn't there.

When you're going through a breakup, you should just let yourself feel everything so you can get over it as opposed to pretending everything's okay and dragging it out.

We’re multigenerational Squires. (Carl) Which means what? You prance around with tinfoil armor and plastic swords pretending to be knights? (Nick)

What are we afraid of? We're afraid of the truth. We're pretending that we live in a democracy, and we're pretending we're free. The insanity is that we live inside of the false stories that we tell each other.

Why had I wasted all my time pretending to be someone I wasn't? I was tired, so very, very tired of standing on my own brakes. I felt...right. I felt free.

Yeah, pretending to ride a horse is actually a lot harder than riding a horse.

You're pretending this isn't your life. You think it's going to happen some other time. When you're dead you'll realise you were alive now.

Absolutely. No more pretending!

Above the keyhole the door has a latch. It is pretending to be an authentic old latch. The door is pretending to be an authentic old door. Maybe everything there is isn't authentic any more. Maybe everything there is is a kind of pretending.

After writing the letter Sybil lost almost two days. "Coming to," she stumbled across what she had written just before she had dissociated and wrote to Dr. Wilbur as follows: It's just so hard to have to feel, believe, and admit that I do not have conscious control over my selves. It is so much more threatening to have something out of hand than to believe that at any moment I can stop (I started to say "This foolishness") any time I need to. When I wrote the previous letter, I had made up my mind I would show you how I could be very composed and cool and not need to ask you to listen to me nor to explain anything to me nor need any help. By telling you that all this about the multiple personalities was not really true I could show, or so I thought, that I did not need you. Well, it would be easier if it were put on. But the only ruse of which I'm guilty is to have pretended for so long before coming to you that nothing was wrong. Pretending that the personalities did not exist has now caused me to lose about two days.

And I wasn’t playing a role – I was trying to be myself. But the harder I was striving, the more I was realizing that I had probably lost that ‘myself’ somewhere between two perfectly performed roles...

All she'd found was that women spent a great deal of time saying they were please when they were not, similing when they were not happy, and pretending their anger and frustation did not exist

. . . all the little bistros and cafes and shops I'd frequented when I was out there, pretending to live a life.

Be who you are, don’t be a pretender, if you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember.

An educated theologian: someone who's better at rationalizing what they're pretending to know.

Being a good person is not nearly as honourable as being yourself.

But I was beginning to learn that your life is a story told about you, not one that you tell. Of course, you pretend to be the author. You have to. You think, I now choose to go to lunch, when that monotone beep rings from on high at 12:37. But really, the bell decides. You think you're the painter, but you're the canvas.

dear today, i spend all of you pretending i'm okay when i'm not, pretending i'm happy when i'm not, pretending about everything to everyone.

But that’s only because we have to be that way in order to get on with our lives. Just because people are playing doesn’t mean their hearts aren’t in it.

But there is nothing more beautiful than being desperate. And there is nothing more risky than pretending not to care.

Do you think they’ll ever be a place for us? I mean, do you think there’s a place for someone who lives under the radar, someone who has to pretend, someone who is a spy?” “Yes.” Daly said it with such confidence that I sat up in my bed, my cast dangling over the edge. “How do you know?” I asked. “There has to be. I don’t usually philosophize, but I do know one thing.” “What’s that?” “That even when we’re pretending, even when we’re hiding under wigs or accents or clothes that aren’t our style, we can’t hide our nature. Just like I knew from the moment I met you that you would choose this life. And just like I knew, when you told me about this mission, that you would agree to help the CIA find this girl. You would sacrifice yourself and your time with your brother to save someone. It’s just who you are.” “I’ve already messed things up, Daly. What if I’m not good enough? What if I can’t do it?” “That’s the thing, though. You’ll find a way.” I lay back again and buried the side of my face into my pillow. “I’m just not sure how.” “If you continue to think as you’ve always thought, you’ll continue to get what you’ve always got,” Daly said. I considered that. I wasn’t ready to give up. At least not yet. “That one is Itosu wisdom, in case you wondered.” I yawned into the phone. “It’s good advice.” “I’ll let you go. You should be resting. Don’t you have school in the morning?” He said the last part in a teasing tone. “Yeah, if I make it through another day at school. Maybe they’ll get rid of me—kick me out or something. You’d think I would have inherited some of my mom’s artistic genius.” “Can I give you one last bit of advice, Alex?” “Sure.” “Throw it all out the window.” “What?” I stared at my open window. A slight breeze blew the gauzelike drapes in and out as if they were a living creature. “Everything you’ve learned about art, the lines, the colors, the pictures in your head from other artists—just throw it all out. And throw out everything you’ve learned from books and simulations about being a good spy. Don’t try to be like someone else. Don’t force yourself to follow a set of rules that weren’t meant for you. Those work for 99.99% of the people.” “You’re telling me I’m the .01%?” I asked skeptically. “No, I’m telling you you’re not even on the scale.” Daly’s soft breathing traveled through the phone line. “With a mind like yours, you can’t be put in a box. Or even expected to stand outside it. You were never meant to hold still, Alex. You have to stack all the boxes up and climb and keep climbing until you find you. I’m just saying that Alexandra Stewart will find her own way.” The cool night air brushed the skin of my arm and I wished it was Daly’s hand instead. “You sure have a lot of wisdom tonight,” I told him. I expected him to laugh. Instead, the line went silent for a moment. “Because I’m not there. Because I wish I was.” His words were simple, but his message reached inside my heart and left a warmth—a warmth I needed. “Thank you, James.” “Take care, Alex.” I wanted to say more, to keep him at my ear just a little longer. Yet the words itching to break free couldn’t be said from over two thousand miles away. They needed to happen in person. I wasn’t going home until I found Amoriel. Which meant I had to complete this mission. Not just for Amoriel anymore. I had to do it for me. (page 143)

Every fool’s greatest success is nothing but to dare to pretend to be clever because this trick works in some people!

Emotions don’t interfere in my acting, nor in my life.

Everyone wants to help the world, but first and foremost everyone wants to help oneself.

For the rest of tonight she would be the most sparkling, unattainably gorgeous version of herself, nothing but smiles and flashing eyes—and no one would ever see how hurt she was, beneath it all.

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.

Fakery is a vital currency in our social intercourse. That’s not necessarily all bad. A lot of the time we pretend as a way of fortifying or easing connections. When we feign recognition, for example, or delight in seeing someone, or gladness to go out of our way, these are acts of goodwill. At best, pretense can be a form of kindness.

For a sane person to sincerely be happy that someone has succeeded, they have to either be profiting or likely to profit from that person’s success, or be that person.

Heroes are hero no matter if everybody is watching them or nobody watching them.

Growing up seemed to mean that the only kind of pretending that was still safe was pretending we could do without it.

He learned to live with the truth. Not to accept it, but to live with it. It was like living with an elephant. His room was tiny, and every morning he had to squeeze around the truth just to get to the bathroom. To reach the armoire to get a pair of underpants he had to crawl under the truth, playing it wouldn't choose the moment to sit on his face. At night, when he closed his eyes, he felt it looming above him.

Hell, is trying to do what you can't do, trying to be what you're not

How could I explain that it was not all playacting? That I felt more of the male spirit within me than the female - a fierceness that whittled me down to a sharpened spear of ambition. And as a boy, I was applauded, not punished, for such raw energy. It was not beaten out of me for my own good, or worn away by women's chores.

If you stick your head in the sand like an ostrich, pretending you don't exist - why get upset when the world agrees with you/

I always am in a role, lovely – for you, for them – even for myself. Yeah... Even when I’m alone, I am still in a role – and I myself am the most exacting audience I have ever had.

I can be anything – and nothing, and everything at the same time. It all depends on the role I am in.

A young woman forced to keep drunks supplied with beer and siblings with clean underwear—instead of being allowed to pursue something higher —stores up great reserves of vitality, a vitality never dreamed of by university students yawning over their books. (...) The difference between the university graduate and the autodidact lies not so much in the extent of knowledge as in the extent of vitality and self-confidence. The elan with which Tereza flung herself into her new Prague existence was both frenzied and precarious. She seemed to be expecting someone to come up to her any day and say, What are you doing here? Go back where you belong!

If reshaping a life style boils down to pretending and dwindling into a world of make-believe, living may turn into a schizophrenic merry-go-round and the real self might be crunched and munched on, piece by piece. (“He did not know that she knew”)

I hate that about guys. At least girls have the decency to be fake and pretend everything’s okay when shit gets weird. Whenever guys get upset, they get all angry and scary

I pretended I was a Kez colonel pretending to be an Adran colonel,” Olem said. “It was disturbingly easy.” “They didn’t ask for papers or proof?” “In this rain?” Olem gestured at the downpour. “You don’t understand an enlisted man, sir. Nobody asks for bloody papers in this kind of weather.

I'll pretend, I tell myself. Pretending is safer than believing.

I’m tired of pretending, tired of acting like everything’s okay, tired of not being with him…

I never was very good at acting. I never was very good at playing the role. Because the true pretending can only come off in our genuine awareness of the real. Only those of us with the most secure grasp on the real can pretend; can really be good at the performance. And of course I didn't know what was real; I only knew the camera was always on.

In summary, the conclusion that having DID is generally rewarding is unfounded because the vast majority of the attention such patients receive is skeptical, critical, exploitative, or hostile; they are often ignored if they do present symptoms of DID. It is certainly possible that some individuals have attempted to feign the disorder. However, the hostile treatment that one would most likely receive would make feigning another disorder more rewarding.

I think you gotta be who you want to be until you feel like you are whoever it is you’re trying to become. Sometimes half of doing something is pretending that you can.

It is my belief that, given the necessary physical likeness, it was far easier to pretend to be king of Ruritania than it would have been to personate my next-door neighbor.

It is much harder to pretend than it is to simply be who you already are.

It takes patience to listen. It takes skill to pretend you’re listening.