Deceptively Quotes & Sayings

She expected annoyance, tolerance, perhaps even a distant amusement. She hadn't expected his reaction.
His arms closed around her like a vice, pulling her tightly up against him. And she didn't have time to kiss him - the touch of her mouth against his seemed to ignite a firestorm. She could feel him through every inch of her body, the lean, deceptively strong body beneath the suit, the heat and lure of muscle and sinew, the sheer intensity of him. She felt as if she were being absorbed into a maelstrom, and all she could do was hold onto him as he kissed her, he kissed her, using his tongue, kissing her with a thoroughness she'd never experienced. — Anne Stuart

Don't underestimate the effects of complacency ... cobwebs are deceptively heavy and are hard to shake loose. — Erica Goros

I work for a company that makes deceptively shallow serving dishes for Chinese restaurants. — Woody Allen

I wonder if anyone but me realizes what goes on in that head back of your deceptively sweet face. — Margaret Mitchell

Even though Styxx was taller, Galen had carried him off the field of battle and held his hand the whole time they'd closed the wound. Squeeze when it hurts, and don't worry about breaking anything, Highness. Trust me, if my deceptively strong Thia wasn't able to break it during her childbirths, there's no damage you can do. And at least you're not threatening to cut off my balls, fry them up, and feed them to me. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated. — Arnold Palmer

The land of opportunities that appeared greener when they were on the other side of the world deceptively veiled the harsh terrains which could only be transformed into fertile oasis with the passage of time and tough grind. — Neetha Joseph

Disputants often fare poorly when they each act greedily and deceptively. — Howard Raiffa

I wanted to portray very, very dark subject matter and a deceptively complex story in the brightest colours and simplest lines possible to leave the readers reeling. — Mark Millar

...it's been amazing- not perfect, but amazing. I'm actually glad of the nonperfection because that has made our relationship feel more grounded, solid, and real than what I had (...), which just cruised blithely along, deceptively perfect, until it crashed and burned in a fiery wreck. — Sherri Rifkin

Cheryl Strayed is a courageous, gritty, and deceptively elegant writer. — Pam Houston

Mind control is the process by which individual or collective freedom of choice and action is compromised by agents or agencies that modify or distort perception, motivation, affect, cognition and/or behavioral outcomes. It is neither magical nor mystical, but a process that involves a set of basic social psychological principles. Conformity, compliance, persuasion, dissonance, reactance, guilt and fear arousal, modeling and identification are some of the staple social influence ingredients well studied in psychological experiments and field studies. In some combinations, they create a powerful crucible of extreme mental and behavioral manipulation when synthesized with several other real-world factors, such as charismatic, authoritarian leaders, dominant ideologies, social isolation, physical debilitation, induced phobias, and extreme threats or promised rewards that are typically deceptively orchestrated, over an extended time period in settings where they are applied intensively. — Steven Hassan

Whatever it was that had drawn him to police work, that had wed him to the job for so many years, it surely wasn't the appeal of a gun or the deceptively simple solution it offers. — John Verdon

Am I the cause of all your tears?" Dallin asked in a deceptively soft tone. "Yes," Lacey whispered honestly, glancing up at him to try and gauge what type of mood he was in this morning. His face, as usual, gave nothing away. "Then I would not have you wipe them away. The tears that are streaming down your cheeks belong to me. — Willow S. Brooks

Doyle's skin wasn't brown - it was black. He looked as if he'd been carved from ebony. His cheekbones were high and sculpted, the chin a little too sharp for my taste. He was all angles and darkness. Those angles looked deceptively delicate, like the bones of a bird, but I'd seen him be hit full in the face with a war hammer once. He'd bled, but he hadn't broken. The — Laurell K. Hamilton

One entered the world, Denis pursued, having ready-made ideas about everything. One had a philosophy and tried to make life fit into it. One should have lived first and then made one's philosophy to fit life ... Life, facts, things were horribly complicated; ideas, even the most difficult of them, deceptively simple. In the world of ideas, everything was clear; in life all was obscure, embroiled. Was it surprising that one was miserable, horribly unhappy? — Aldous Huxley

They are deceptively simple. I admit that. But for me, all my life I try to simplify things. As a child in school, things were very hard for me to understand often, and I developed a knack, I think. I developed a process to simplify things so I would understand them. — Eric Carle

There was a dark aura about him, a hint of caged power in that deceptively casual, sprawled poise. Danger personified.
If this had been a film she would have expected to hear the warning wail of an electric guitar creep over the soft background bustle of the city. — Heather R. Blair

A garden path,' write the landscape architects Charles W. Moore, William J. Mitchell, and William Turnbull, 'can become the thread of a plot, connecting moments and incidents into a narrative. The narrative structure might be a simple chain of events with a beginning, middle, and end. It might be embellished with diversions, digressions, and picaresque twists, be accompanied by parallel ways (subplots), or deceptively fork into blind alleys like the althernative scenerios explored in a detective novel. — Rebecca Solnit

His cell-phone rang. Dominic fumbled for it on the nightstand next to the couch, the dim lights not helping his endeavour. He had piercing, generic, banal fluorescent lights on his face all the time at work and at University, it was so bad it made him loathe even natural sunlight. Lucky this apartment's living room light had a dimmer. He flipped open his phone and said hello. 'Hey Dom, how you doin'?' a voice boomed. It was Ben. They proceeded to talk about the upcoming exams, which were deceptively close as it was week 10 at the moment. Yes, they would be alright. Yes, they would meet up afterwards. No, he hadn't studied more than Ben had. As he clapped the phone closed after the genial conversation reached its natural nadir, he had forgotten most of what had been said — T.P. Grish

It is necessary to recover the primeval force of the shock taking place at the moment when opposite a man (the viewer) there stood for the first time a man (the actor) deceptively similar to us, yet at the same time infinitely foreign, beyond an impassable barrier. — Tadeusz Kantor

How about this? she retorted, her voice deceptively flirtatious, and in that small, stolen moment in his mind, he quickly spun and grasped her by the small of her back, pulled her close into to him, and made her his. And maybe she resisted at first before giving in, or maybe she didn't - maybe she'd wanted this just as long as he had. But none of that would matter, because they would finally be together, starting at that moment and for the rest of their lives. And they would love each other and raise children and make music, and life would suddenly be worth living, and Christ, how could anyone ever throw something like that away? — J. Tonzelli

Wars make history seem deceptively simple. They provide clear turning points, easy distinctions.: before and after, winner and loser, right and wrong. True history, the past, is not like that. It isn't flat or linear. It has no outline. It is slippery, like liquid; infinite and unknowable, like space. And it is changeable: just when you think you see a pattern, perspective shifts, an alternate version is proffered, a long-forgotten memory resurfaces. — Kate Morton

[Golf]is deceptively simple, endlessly complicated. A child can play it well, and a grown man can never master it. Any single round of it is full of unexpected triumphs and perfect shots that end in disaster. It is almost a science, yet it is a puzzle without an answer. It is gratifying and tantalizing, precise and unpredictable. It requires complete concentration and total relaxation. It satisfies the soul and frustrates the intellect. It is at the same time, rewarding and maddening. And it is without doubt the greatest game mankind has ever invented. — Arnold Palmer

The reverend bishop, knowing that Pelagia found it easier to think with her knitting in her hands, told her, "You may knit." The pointed steel needles began clacking furiously and Mitrofanii frowned as he recalled what dreadful creations those deceptively deft hands brought into the world. At Eastertide the sister had presented the bishop with a white scarf adorned with the letters CA for "Christ is Arisen," rendered so crookedly that they seemed already to have celebrated the ending of the fast with some gusto. "Who is this for?" His Grace — Boris Akunin

In today's world it is deceptively easy to lose sight of our direction and the things that matter and give us joy. How quickly the days can slip by, the years all gone, and we, at the end of our lives, mourning the life we dreamed of but never lived. Poetry urges us to stand once and for all, and now, in the heart of our own life. — Roger Housden

And you're sorry that the ephemeral beauty has faded so rapidly, so irretrievably, that it flashed so deceptively and pointlessly before your eyes
you're sorry, for you didn't even have time to fall in love ... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Many Western biologists appreciate the mystery inherent in the animals they observe. They comprehend that, objectively, what they are watching is deceptively complex and, subjectively, that the animals themselves have nonhuman ways of life. They know that while experiments can be designed to reveal aspects of the animal, the animal itself will always remain larger than the sum of any set of experiments. They know they can be very precise about what they do, but that that does not guarantee they will be accurate. They know the behavior of an individual animal may differ strikingly from the generally recognized behavior of its species; and that the same species may behave quite differently from place to place, from year to year. — Barry Lopez

If I'm among men who don't agree at all with my nature, I will hardly be able to accommodate myself to them without greatly changing myself. A free man who lives among the ignorant strives as far as he can to avoid their favors. A free man
acts honestly, not deceptively. Only free man are genuinely useful to one another and can form true friendships. And it's absolutely permissible, by the highest right of Nature, for everyone to employ clear reason to determine how to live in a way that will allow him to flourish. — Irvin D. Yalom

My new city [Seattle] and its hinterland felt deceptively homely. Their similar latitude gave them the angular light and lingering evenings I was used to. Their damp marine weather, blowing in from the southwest, came in the right direction. When the mountains are hidden under a low sky, one might almost imagine oneself to be in Britain. — Jonathan Raban

It was not mine to tell. He asked for my word I would keep silent."

"I think you might have broken it upon this occasion," Plum returned hotly.

"Then I think you know me not at all," Brisbane countered, his tone deceptively bland. He would put up with Plum's barbs only so long before he took the quarrel further, and that was not an eventuality I cared to see. "Calm yourself, Plum. If I am not upset, you have no call to be." I turned to Brisbane. "I understand why you did not tell me. You are a man of your word. And you know precisely when it is necessary to break it. This was not that time." The look he gave me was mingled gratitude and promise of a significant dose of his attentions later. I shivered a little as Portia entered. — Deanna Raybourn

Bianca swallowed past the biter chunks of broken heart clogging her throat. "I'm not going to kill him."
From her listening post, Vivi shot her a wicked grin. "Would have been my first plan of action."
"Whacking someone is always your first idea," Lexie said, her laptop screen giving her green highlights an otherworldly glow.
"True." Vivi shrugged her deceptively small shoulders, a snarky grin curling her blood-red lips. "That's what makes me so damn charming. — Avery Flynn

What I've found about 'Cinderella' is that what it provokes in an audience is really extraordinary. It appears to be a deceptively simple tale, but I've heard nothing but people drawing all different things out of it. — Kenneth Branagh

I am shrunken and shriveled inside, a rotten chestnut hidden beneath a deceptively smooth shell — Laura Wiess

He grinned. "Busted. I'm a monster. Jev is my deceptively harmless - and shockingly handsome - alter ego."
"And I'm on top of it," she announced with witty triumph.
"Is that a Freudian slip?"
His bluntness caught her off guard. A self-conscious blush rose in her face. — Becca Fitzpatrick

Christianity began with 120 in the Upper Room, within three centuries it had become the predominant religion of the Roman Empire. What brought this about? The answer is deceptively simple, while Christianity was being presented to unbelievers in both Word and deed, it was the deed that far exceeded the Word in evangelistic effectiveness. — C. Wagner

Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside she is covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary
and terrible elegant. — Muriel Barbery

Imagine you are walking down a leafy path ... The sun is receding, and you are walking alone, caressed by the breezy light of the late afternoon. Then suddenly, you feel a large drop on your right arm. Is it raining? You look up. The sky is still deceptively sunny ... seconds later another drop. Then, with the sun still perched in the sky, you are drenched in a shower of rain. This is how memories invade me, abruptly and unexpectedly ... — Azar Nafisi

The songwriting of Hall & Oates is deceptively complex. There are a number of key changes that pass you by as you're listening to the song because they're so seamless and clever. — Ben Gibbard

AT THE CENTER of Wilson's work was an attempt to solve a deceptively simple puzzle: what makes life worth living when we are old and frail and unable to care for ourselves? — Atul Gawande

If your church is not going to support the committed same-sex relationships of LGBT congregants, be honest about that. Bait-and-switch is deceptively un-Christ-like and serves to push gay and transgender believers farther away each time the deception happens. — Kathy Baldock

The Iranian regime suppresses its own people as well as others in the region. It prevents peace by sponsoring terror globally. With the ultimate weapon that it is deceptively developing, the regime aims to gain hegemony over the entire Middle East and hold the world's economy hostage. — Shimon Peres

- 'I've never had a thing for homicidal charmers before.'
- 'But now you do?'
- 'Apparently.' -I muttered, knowing he could feel my raicing heartbeat under his chest.
- 'Well, if it helps, I've never had a thing for beautiful, deceptively brave, innocent charmers before.'
- 'And now you do?'
His grin widened, taking on a wolfish look.
- 'Definitely — Emma Winters

Norbert Blei is a writer the way people used to be troubadours and minstrels, celebrating what he has seen and heart and felt in a deceptively simple style reminiscent of the early Sherwood Anderson ... Like Anderson, he is a lover, and his affection invests his writing with a singular charm. — Sydney J. Harris

Look what the cat dragged in." He was playing to the audience. Never good. "Is he talking to me or you?" Curran asked. His voice was deceptively light. "I don't know," I said. "But I'm sure he'll get around to telling us. — Ilona Andrews

Life is slow and subtle. Love takes time to show and grow. In life, little acts count. In fact, that is what a life is all about, a long parade of moments deceptively inconsequential. — John F. Kavanaugh

Unlike prose writing, the strange process of writing with pictures encourages associations and recollections to accumulate literally in front of your eyes; people, places, and events appear out of nowhere. Doors open into rooms remembered from childhood, faces form into dead relatives, and distant loves appear, almost magically, on the page- all deceptively manageable, visceral, the combinations sometimes even revelatory. — Chris Ware

But my favorite remained the basic roast chicken. What a deceptively simple dish. I had come to believe that one can judge the quality of a cook by his or her roast chicken. Above all, it should taste like chicken: it should be so good that even a perfectly simple, buttery roast should be a delight. — Julia Child

S. E. Smith's I Live in a Hut has a deceptively simple title, considering that the brain in that hut contains galaxies-worth of invention: At night when your soldiers are praying ceaselessly for less rain and more underwear my soldiers make underwear out of rain. These poems seesaw between despair and delight but delight is winning the battle. Smith is a somersaulting tightrope walker of a poet and her poems will make you look at anything and everything with new eyes: For days I tried to rub the new freckle // off my hand until I realized what it was / and began to grant it its sovereignty. — Matthea Harvey

The rising strong reckoning has two deceptively simple parts: (1) engaging with our feelings, and (2) getting curious about the story behind the feelings--what emotions we're experiencing and how they are connected to our thoughts and behaviors. — Brene Brown

The plot is deceptively simple. Condensed even fur- ther, it might read as a personal ad in some questfinder's forum: Unlikely hero to save world from cataclysm. Seeks motley assortment of companions. Sidequests guaranteed. — Michael P. Williams

Books are like people. Some look deceptively attractive from a distance, some deceptively unappealing; some are easy company, some demand hard work that isn't guaranteed to pay off. Some become friends and say friends for life. Some change in our absence - or perhaps it is we who change in theirs - and we meet up again only to find that we don't get along any more. — Mark Haddon

With the 'Watchmen' comic, we attempted to tell it in an accessible way. I deliberately made the artwork very clear, deceptively so. You think you're sucking on a sweetie, but it turns out to be a sugar-coated chili. — Dave Gibbons

I walked up the ramp and stood in the van, trying to decide where to begin my inspection of the concealed words whose bones were molded together by men to make either an awesome vision of truth that would guard any door of the mind, or a creature that would stand for a while, deceptively whole, then collapse, scattering across the threshold the dry dead bones that did not even burst into flame at their friction one with the other. — Janet Frame

Unlike literary characters, our future is mostly shaped by small, trivial choices - seemingly insignificant, but deceptively fateful. — Guillermo Erades

When Isaac Newton embarked on his great program, he encountered a fundamental lack of definition where it was most needed. He began with a semantic sleight of hand: "I do not define time, space, place, and motion, as being well known to all," he wrote deceptively. Defining these words was his very purpose. There were no agreed standards for weights and measures. Weight and measure were themselves vague terms. Latin seemed more reliable than English, precisely because it was less worn by everyday use, but the Romans had not possessed the necessary words either. — James Gleick

Hey, any idea why Australians speak something that sounds deceptively like English but isn't? I mean, I'm trying to figure out why I can't seem to converse with another human being who speaks the same language as I do. — Elle Lothlorien

Busted. I'm a monster. Jev is my deceptively harmless-and shockingly handsome-alter ego. — Becca Fitzpatrick

"Did God have a mother?" Children, when told that God made the heavens and the earth, innocently ask whether God had a mother. This deceptively simple question has stumped the elders of the church and embarrassed the finest theologians, precipitating some of the thorniest theological debates over the centuries. All the great religions have elaborate mythologies surrounding the divine act of Creation, but none of them adequately confronts the logical paradoxes inherent in the question that even children ask. — Michio Kaku

People often ask me why my style is so simple. It is, in fact, deceptively simple, for no two sentences are alike. It is clarity that I am striving to attain, not simplicity.
Of course, some people want literature to be difficult and there are writers who like to make their readers toil and sweat. They hope to be taken more seriously that way. I have always tried to achieve a prose that is easy and conversational. And those who think this is simple should try it for themselves. — Ruskin Bond

Some curses fade and leave nothing but the faintest mark, a tea stain on watered silk. There are those that are so malevolent that, upon defeat, explode in a fiery burst of sulfurous flames, burning everything they touch as they die. Others dissolve like morning mist in the brightness of the midday sun. Some cannot be defeated at all, but feed upon the energy spent trying to vanquish it, growing more and more potent with each failed attempt.
And then there are those ancient curses with deceptively simple antidotes that shatter like jagged shards of a vast mirror.
These curses may be broken, but never completely destroyed, sharp slivers of light distorted. — Ava Zavora

The paths of Fate are many and varied,and no sane being should ever venture down the deceptively pleasant one of "if only".What happened,happened; — Christie Golden

And with that, my friend drove away and left me at the gates of hell, deceptively decorated to look like a Martha Stewart magazine. — Cardeno C.

smoke is beautiful; weightless and shapeless, it almost appears as deceptively powerless as the person releasing it, yet, it comes from within and rises above us all. Crap, — Chetan Bhagat

Getting help for substance abuse can be reduced to the deceptively simple focus of 'keeping away from the dope.' But what does getting help with depression mean? Learning to keep away from your own mind? — Elizabeth Wurtzel

The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. — Rachel Carson

Fred Astaire never let you see him sweat, but he sweetened his deceptively casual virtuosity with just enough charm to make it irresistible. — Terry Teachout

Are we going to do this now, brother?" Kade asked, his voice deceptively smooth, though Blane could see a flicker of fear in his eyes. Kade's hold tightened on Kathleen, as though he was afraid that Blane would take her from him.
"You mean talk about the elephant in the room?" Blane said dryly, cocking an eyebrow.
"She'd get pretty pissed off if she heard you call her an elephant. — Tiffany Snow

Whatever our background, culture or race, what rewards us most powerfully and consistently are the most deceptively simple abilities of all: the ability to be kind. — Stephanie Dowrick

And how does my aide come by this information before I do?"

"Well, you know . . . pillow talk. See, sex - in this case - is an advantage to you. McNab said they'd get through faster, but at data clubs like that, the units are totally clogged. But he's on it and it's his top priority."

She cleared her throat when Eve made no comment. "Should I still contact Captain Feeney?"

"Oh, Feeney and I appear to be superfluous at this point. You and McPecker can fill us in whenever you feel it's appropriate."

"McPecker." Peabody snorted. "That's a good one. I'm going to use it on him."

"Happy to help." She shot Peabody a deceptively friendly look. "Perhaps I'm wasting my time going to the lab. Have you and Dickie also had a liaison?"

" Eeeuw."

"My faith in you is, at least, partially restored. — J.D. Robb

Some of this story is completely true. And some of it isn't. Like truth, evil comes in all sorts of flavors. Some bitter. Some deceptively sweet. Sometimes it comes with a heavy price. While most people don't invite evil into their lives, the dirty little secret is that an invitation isn't necessary. Locked doors don't matter. Neither do fancy security systems. Evil is kind of amazing when you think about it. She knows how to get inside. — Gregg Olsen

The blues is deceptively simple. Verse and chorus. Sometimes not even a chorus. Four bars that repeat, no Auto-Tune, electricity optional. It is the most direct, bare-bones of content. There is no interference between the head and heart. — Shawn Amos

My sex life became sort of like Diet Coke - deceptively sweet minus nutrition. — Toni Morrison

Fearful people are more dependent, more easily manipulated and controlled, more susceptible to deceptively simple, strong, tough measures and hard-line postures ... They may accept and even welcome repression if it promises to relieve their insecurities. — George Gerbner

You know I'm no' a good man," he said, his voice deceptively gentle, belying the steel beneath it. "I've made no excuses. I've given you no pretty lies. You came with me anyway. Doona pretend you doona know what I want and doona think to deny me. Twice now you've tried to go back. There is no going back with me, Chloe-lass. — Karen Marie Moning

One of your many jobs as manager is information conduit, and the rules are deceptively simple: for each piece of information you see, you must correctly determine who on your team needs that piece of information to do their job. — Rands

The cemetery has ... an inscription: 'Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I will Fear No Evil, For Thou Art With Me.' Yes, it does feel deceptively safer with two; but Thou is a slippery character. Every Thou I've known has had a way of going missing. — Margaret Atwood

We stand now where two roads diverge. But unlike the roads in Robert Frost's familiar poem, they are not equally fair. The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster. The other fork of the road - the one less traveled by - offers our last, our only chance to reach a destination that assures the preservation of the earth. — Rachel Carson

You have disappointed me in so many ways," he says, his voice deceptively soft. "Please don't let this be another. — Tahereh Mafi

Teacher, as he was called, looked tiny, childlike, and deceptively vulnerable. — Tan Twan Eng

Yes, it does feel deceptively safer with two; but Thou is a slippery character. Every Thou I've known has had a way of going missing. They skip town or turn perfidious, or else the drop like flies and then where are you? — Margaret Atwood

How deceptively light they are, the truly decisive steps we take in life. — John Banville

CEREMONY OF FLIES hits the road like a nitrous-fueled GTO ... and then pulls the ultimate stunt of getting better. What starts as a deceptively simple hard-boiled noir story twists on itself and adds layers and grows stranger and before you know it, BAM - it's the end of the world and all you can do is hang on by your fingernails. This really, truly is one of the best novellas I've read in years. — Lisa Morton

Prejudice is an assortment of deceptively small personal judgments - deceptive because of their great cost in our daily lives. — Jean Stapleton

A typical battlefield of this struggle is Hawaii, America's most deceptively beautiful state. For most residents and visitors, it seems an unspoiled island paradise. In actuality it is a killing field of biological diversity. When — Edward O. Wilson

faith that's primarily intellectual - that is, a matter of mastering information - is deceptively fragile. — Rod Dreher

And people are always saying he deceptively quick, deceptively athletic, and I don't know if that's just because I'm Asian or what it is, but obviously there's going to be stereotypes that you have to fight. — Jeremy Lin

Service is a deceptively profound way to prove not only what you can do for the world, but what you can tell the world to expect from you and your ambitions. — Chelsea Clinton