faking Quotes

“There was something just slightly off in Vince’s bright, Asian smile. Like he had learned to smile from a picture book. Even when he made the required dirty put-down jokes with the cops, nobody got mad at him. Nobody laughed, either, but that didn’t stop him. He kept making all the correct ritual gestures, but he always seemed to be faking. That’s why I liked him, I think. Another guy pretending to be human, just like me.”

“Anybody can be charming if they don’t mind faking it, saying all the stupid, obvious, nauseating things that a conscience keeps most people from saying. Happily, I don’t have a conscience. I say them.”

“I might have stopped anyway, to show off Rita. The whole point of wearing a disguise was to be seen wearing her.”

“I was good at being charming, one of my very few vanities. I had studied hard and practiced long, and when I applied myself no one could tell I was faking it.”

“I had been too good too many times. It could become a problem. But what could I do? Be stupid for a while? I wasn’t sure I knew how, even after so many years of careful observation.”

“Rahel looked around her and saw she was in a Play. But she had only a small part. She was just the landscape. A flower perhaps. Or a tree. A face in the crowd. A Townspeople.”

“In a scene where nobody with any ambition is really what he appears to be, there’s not much risk in acting like a king-hell freak.”

“How is it possible for me to be so miserable and embarrassed and humiliated and beaten and still function, still talk and smile and concentrate?”

“I feel like everyone fakes who they really are, when deep down we’re all equal amounts of screwed up. Some of us are just better at hiding it than others.”

“My sore throat miraculously disappeared, so that I was quite well the very same day.”