pretend Quotes

“Being two different people is so exhausting. I’ve taught myself to speak with two different voices and only say certain things around certain people. I’ve mastered it. As much as I say I don’t have to choose which Starr I am with Chris, maybe without realizing it, I have to an extent. Part of me feels like I can’t exist around people like him.”

“When the enemy attacks, remain undisturbed but feign weakness.”

“Nick loved a girl who doesn’t exist. I was pretending, the way I often did, pretending to have a personality. I can’t help it, it’s what I’ve always done: The way some women change fashion regularly, I change personalities. What persona feels good, what’s coveted, what’s au courant? I think most people do this, they just don’t admit it, or else they settle on one persona because they are too lazy or stupid to pull a switch.”

“I was a little excited but mostly blorft. ‘Blorft’ is an adjective I just made up that means ‘Completely overwhelmed but proceeding as if everything is fine and reacting to the stress with the torpor of a possum.’ I have been blorft every day for the past seven years.”

“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.”

“We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not.”

″‘I think you should read it, Ruth,’ he said to her. ‘It’s what he wants you to do. Read it aloud, so he can hear you.‘”

″‘It’s no use talking about it,’ Alice said, looking up at the house and pretending it was arguing with her. ‘I’m not going in again yet. I know I should have to get through the Looking-glass again – back into the old room – and there’d be an end of all my adventures!’ So, resolutely turning her back upon the house, she set out once more down the path, determined to keep straight on till she got to the hill.”

“Oh, Kitty, how nice it would be if we could only get through into Looking-glass House! I’m sure it’s got, oh! such beautiful things in it! Let’s pretend there’s a way of getting through into it, somehow, Kitty. Let’s pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze, so that we can get through. Why it’s turning into a sort of mist now, I declare! It’ll be easy enough to get through”

I think that you are repeating what you have heard older people say. You are pretending to be touchy; but you are not really. Stop being so tiresome, and tell me instead what part of the church you want to see. To take you to it will be a real pleasure.

“We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.”

“We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves.”

“When we so fear the dark that we demand light around the clock, there can be only one result: artificial light that is glaring and graceless and, beyond its borders, a darkness that grows ever more terrifying as we try to hold it off.”

“He often felt that too many people lived their lives acting and pretending, wearing masks and losing themselves in the process.”

“I became good at pretending. I became so good that after a while the lines blurred between my truth and fiction. And sometimes, when I did a really good job of pretending, I even fooled myself.”

″‘So we decided to hold parties and pretend each week had become the new year. Each week we could forget past wrongs done to us. We weren’t allowed to think a bad thought. We feasted, we laughed, we played games, lost and won, we told the best stories. And each week, we could hope to be lucky. That hope was our only joy. And that’s how we came to call our little parties Joy Luck.‘”

“To seek freedom is the only driving force I know. Freedom to fly off into that infinity out there. Freedom to dissolve; to lift off; to be like the flame of a candle, which, in spite of being up against the light of a billion stars, remains intact, because it never pretended to be more than what it is: a mere candle.”

″ I know what it’s like to spend an entire lifetime trying to pretend that I’m okay, that I’m “fine.” I know what it’s like to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders, convincing people that I have it all together. I know how exhausting it is and how many nights I cried alone in my bed, too tired to carry the burden anymore. What I do know is the freedom when I decided that I wasn’t going to pretend anymore.”

“I guess a fake life inside a cartoon is a lot better than his real life . . . So I draw cartoons to make him happy, to give him other worlds to live inside.”

“Now we can both pretend we have friends.”

“It always makes me want to grab him by the shirt and push him until he lets the girl go. But instead, every time, I pretend not to notice. What could I do anyway?”

″ ‘Yo quiero frijoles-’ ‘huh?’ asked Skippito? ‘The dude just wants his beans back,’ said Poquito Tito. ‘And you are the dog for the job.’ ‘Me?’ asked Skippito.”

“There seems to be no game more beloved of children in all lands and all times than the one called Pretend”

“Sometimes my mother laughs like crazy at my jokes. Other times she pretends not to get them. And then, there are times when I know she gets them but she doesn’t seem to like them. This was one of those times. So I decided no more jokes until after dinner.”

“After the ballet, Grace played the part of Juliet, dancing around her room in her imaginary tutu. I can be anything I want, she thought.”

“ ‘I’m shrinking. Getting smaller,’ said Treehorn. ‘If you want to pretend you’re shrinking, that’s all right,’ said Treehorn’s mother, ‘as long as you don’t do it at the table.’ “

″‘I am so small and weak, Po Po,’ Shang pretended. ‘I could not hold the rope alone.’ ‘This time I will help,’ Tao said. ‘Let us do it again.‘”

“I’ve always longed for a younger sister, so I’m going to adopt you, Philippa dear, and try to believe that you’re really and truly mine.”

“A real king’s life is perhaps a hard one; but a pretended king’s is, I warrant, much harder.”

“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.”

″ ‘You know,’ she says to me, kind of quiet. ‘You are not just a giraffe. You’re Geraldine. You dance like crazy. You pretend so well, one time I thought you were the Queen of England.’ ”

“Look here, you’re a nice chap- I don’t mind your knowing. Don’t tell, but it’s all a pretend. This car doesn’t belong to me at all, and I don’t know how to drive it. They put me here just to make people look, and then they hope they’ll buy the car.”

″‘You must all behave like the cat. Look at that way he’s purring!’ It was quite true. The cat was purring as though nothing were happening, because he knew that the Flood was only a game.”

″‘At least he said sorry,’ Ravi continued. ‘Look at all of them.’ He nodded at the group around his parents. ‘Their friends, neighbors. They’ve never apologized, just pretended like the last six years never even happened.‘”

“In the Soviet Union every worker is a government worker, and they have a saying: As long as the bosses pretend to pay us, we will pretend to work.”

“You can’t climb a mountain that you pretend isn’t there.”