Just Pretending Quotes & Sayings

Just like a kitten pretending to be a lion. — Kiki Hamilton

When I was a little girl, I used to walk around with a towel on my head, pretending I was a nun. And then one day my mother said, 'Why don't you just become an actress, and then you can pretend you're a nun.' — Olivia Hussey

Stop it, Barry," Joanie said. "Get ahold of yourself. This is just how we work."
I agreed. When she told Shelley I was useless, I heard the smile in her voice and knew she was pretending to be irritated. Really, she wouldn't know what to do without my uselessness, just as I wouldn't know what to do without her complaints. I take it back. It's not that we don't treat each other well; it's just that we're comfortable enough to know that sarcasm and aloofness keep us afloat, and we never have to watch where we step.
"You are both so cold," Barry said that night. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

When you have to pretend to be someone, anyone other than yourself. Then you need to make over every part of you. Because just pretending to be someone, anyone other than yourself, you always will be just you. Make over your attitude, your ways, values and morals. Then you will be free to be just you. — Vanessa Vanney Thompson

The truth about porn. Men do not watch porn and fantasize over the women in the videos, they fantasize about being wanted like the women in the videos are pretending to want their partner. If you want to fulfill your man's fantasies, just make him feel wanted. — Michael A. Wood Jr.

No one is normal. Everyone is just pretending to be normal. — Alessandra Torre

I just slipped into my mother's office to look at the names of my new peer helpers, and I'm so happy! Your name is on the list! I thought maybe I'd scared you by coming right out and asking you to apply. I realize it's an unusual setup, but try not to think of it as my parents offering to pay people to be my friend. I know there's something unsettling and prideless in that. I prefer to think of it this way: my parents are paying people to pretend to be my friend. This will be much closer to the truth, I suspect, and I have no problem with this. I'm guessing that a lot of people in high school are only pretending to be friends, right? It'll be a start, I figure. — Cammie McGovern

I'm tired of pretending that everything's fine just so I can please everyone else. — Spencer Tracy

As I looked out at the water, I realized there was nowhere to go, nowhere left to run. And I just had to stay here, facing this terrible truth. I felt, as more tears fell, just how tired I was, a tiredness that had nothing to do with the hour. I was tired of running away from this, tired of not telling people, tired of not talking about it, tired of pretending things were okay when they had never, ever been less than okay. — Morgan Matson

I think you sort of shed skins as you go along in life. You get into your 40s, and you feel like, 'OK, no more pretending.' You get to just be who you are. — Annette Bening

Admitting that this job isn't always easy doesn't make somebody a bad mother. At least, it shouldn't. We're all on this ride together. We are not the first ones to ever accidentally tell our children to shut up, or wonder - just for a moment - what it would be like if we'd never had children. We aren't the first mothers to feel overwhelmed and challenged and not entirely fulfilled by motherhood. And we certainly won't be the last. Nothing can be lost by admitting our weaknesses and imperfections to one another. In fact, quite the opposite is true. We will be better mothers, better wives, and better women if we are able to finally drop the act and get real. Who are we pretending for, anyway? — Jill Smokler

He never heard my story but he taught me it wasn't true. It was just pretend but pretending is hard. — Elizabeth Scott

If you are ready to wake up, you are going to wake up. If you're not you are going to stay pretending that you are just a poor little me ... — Alan Watts

I just watched the news. Seeing crazy people doing crazy stuff to other people and pretending that they're the good guys really helped. — Casper Crump

I loved this woman. You can't just turn off that kind of feeling. But I loved a person who didn't exist. I loved someone Diana was pretending to be. Maybe the signs were there, but I refused to see them. Maybe I didn't want to see them. — James Patterson

It's an unholy crusade against good people everywhere, all in my name. If I had a stomach, I'd be sick to it. You see now why so many good people just give up out there? You can only take so much evil pretending to be good. You can only handle so many broken souls acting as if good people are the evil ones, before you raise your hands and claim defeat. But I want you all to understand something. There is evil happening. There are spirits from Hell demonizing. There are even wars planned, and dark judgments justified by the self-righteous fanatics. But none of that means good can't also triumph. None of that means good cannot rise up against hatred, against judgment, against the armies of Hell itself, and bring about a tidal wave of joy and love. Evil does, but good always is. — Sean Patrick Brennan

Don't assume you are more creative or better than anyone, because some people with better stuffs are just pretending to be dumb for a while. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Sometimes I think everyone is just pretending to be brave, and none of us really are. Maybe pretending is how you get brave, I don't know. — George R R Martin

I like the fact that I have two names because I find that in this industry you have to have dual personalities [especially] being a transitional entertainer [being an actor going into music]. It's not that I'm pretending to be somebody else but it's just that the people that I act with, the Directors, Producers and Agents, can't really relate to what I talk about. — Drake

Oooh!" Bill squealed. "Very rococo."
"So, I'm really doing this? I'm just going to go down there and pretend
" (Luce)
"No pretending." Bill shook his head. "Own it. Own that cleavage, girl, you know you want to. — Lauren Kate

If I have renounced the search of truth, if I have come into the port of some pretending dogmatism, some new church, some Schelling or Cousin, I have died to all use of these new events that are born out of prolific time into multitude of life every hour. I am as bankrupt to whom brilliant opportunities offer in vain. He has just foreclosed his freedom, tied his hands, locked himself up and given the key to another to keep. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The difficult thing, the glorious thing, was to be who you really were, even if that person was cruel or dangerous, particularly if cruel and dangerous. There was courage in not distinguishing the animal you happened to be. On the other hand, you had to avoid pretending to be more of an animal than you were: take that path, start exaggerating or faking and you became just another Cubby, just as much of a liar, a hypocrite — J.K. Rowling

When people say the word "convention," they are usually referring to large gatherings of the employees of companies and corporations who attend a mass assembly, usually in a big hotel somewhere, for the purpose of pretending to learn stuff when they are in fact enjoying a free trip somewhere, time off work, and the opportunity to flirt with strangers, drink, and otherwise indulge themselves. The first major difference between a business convention and a fan-dom convention is that fandom doesn't bother with the pretenses. They're just there to have a good time. The second difference is the dress code - the ensembles at a fan convention tend to be considerably more novel. — Jim Butcher

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. — Hannah Simone

But then human beings only understood each other in the first place by pretending. You didn't make predictions about people by modeling the hundred trillion synapses in their brain as separate objects. Ask the best social manipulator on Earth to build you an Artificial Intelligence from scratch, and they'd just give you a dumb look. You predicted people by telling your brain to act like theirs. You put yourself in their place. If you wanted to know what an angry person would do, you activated your own brain's anger circuitry, and whatever that circuitry output, that was your prediction. What did the neural circuitry for anger actually look like inside? Who knew? The best social manipulator on Earth might not know what neurons were, and neither might the best Legilimens. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Quit pretending to be humble when you are really just a self-abusing, emotional, drama junkie. — Bryant McGill

And this is the truth. Because I may be only eighteen, but it already seems pretty obvious that the world is divided into two groups: the doers and the watchers. The people things happen to and the rest of us, who just sort of plod on with things. The Lulus and the Allysons.
It never occurred to me that by pretending to be Lulu, I might slip into that other column, even for just a day. — Gayle Forman

People are afraid of anybody who is different: It makes them worry everyone else is different too, and just pretending to be all the same. James — Cassandra Clare

So anyway, change of subject; why would your parents name you Rosie if your surname was Right? I mean, that's just a little cruel," I asked, pretending to be serious.

She looked at me as if I'd lost the plot a little. "I'm not Rosie Right, I'm Rosie York."

I recoiled, faking shock. "Seriously? Damn it, I could have sworn you were Miss Right."

She rolled her eyes as she got it. "Nice. Didn't see that one coming so good job."

"You like that? I made that up on the spot, just for you. — Kirsty Moseley

She came in thinking she would rescue him, like some sort of story, like a little kid pretending to be a brave knight. He needed saving; therefore, she would save him. This was the way it used to work. It used to always be so simple, it was just the two of them and they could make shacks into palaces. But things change. — Anne Ursu

Can I just say here how much I hate the word 'pamper'? While pretending to celebrate and indulge women, it actually implies that their bodies are so revolting that even their 'me time' must be dedicated to turning them into living dolls if potential suitors are to be prevented from running screaming in horror. — Julie Burchill

I loved pretending to be a middle-aged Jewish woman. I just wanted to do what I saw Gilda Radner and Carol Burnett doing. But I'm not a particularly good impressionist. It was never my strong suit. — Jenny Slate

Those last months. No way of wrapping it pretty or pretending otherwise: Rafa was dying. By then it was only me and Mami taking care of him and we didn't know what the fuck to do, what the fuck to say. So we just said nothing. My mom wasn't the effusive type anyway, had one of those event-horizon personalities-shit just fell into her and you never really knew how she felt about it. She just seemed to take it, never gave anything off, not light, not heat. — Junot Diaz

I'd stopped trying to greet her ages ago. She was one of those people that didn't wave back. I'd never understood how you could do that, just ignore a wave or a greeting, but it seemed to be a consistent attribute for crazy people. I mean, how hard was it to stop pretending you didn't see anyone around you and just wave? Why wouldn't you want to be friendly in the most casual of waves with the people that lived next door to you? Because crazy. — R.K. Lilley

The reality is, that no matter what you do in this life, it's coming to an end. Once you accept there's nothing that you can do about your own mortality, then you're now free. You have no control, so stop pretending you do. And just get on with living your life. Stop living in fear. — Jeb Corliss

There's no bed in here. No threat that we'll do something we can't take back. Just two minutes we'll probably never have again...two minutes where we can both stop pretending the scars we can see are the only ones we have."

~Drake — Jennifer Turner

I tried to find a way to go on. I could see familiar traces of the path that was my life, but there was always the wall behind me. Do you know what I mean? First you try and climb, pretending it never happened, but it's too tall. Then you try to go around, thinking you can fix it, but it is too far. Then, in frustration, you beat on it with your hands, but it does nothing, so you tire and sit down and just stare at it. You stare because you can't bring yourself to walk away. Walking away means that you're giving up, abandoning them.
"There is no way back. There is only forward. It's impossible to imagine there's any reason to move ahead, but that isn't the real reason you give up. The real fear
the terror that keeps you rooted
is that you might be wrong."
Myron, Monk of Maribor — Michael J. Sullivan

At its most intense, the admissions process didn't force kids to be Lisa Simpson; it turned them into Eddie Haskell. ("You look lovely in that new dress, Ms. Admissions Counselor.") It guaranteed that teenagers would pursue life with a single ulterior motive, while pretending they weren't. It coated their every undertaking in a thin lacquer of insincerity. Befriending people in hopes of a good rec letter; serving the community to advertise your big heart; studying hard just to puff up the GPA and climb the greasy poll of class rank - nothing was done for its own sake. Do good; do well; but make sure you can prove it on a college app. So — Andrew Ferguson

It's just a party. You eat some food and drink a beer and pretend you don't want to be crawdad fishing," Angie said.
"No, it's an echo chamber of sycophants and I can't listen to some bimbo recite her newest purchases while pretending I don't want to throw myself from the roof. — Mary Jane Hathaway

My music is a mix of everything, mostly my own life. I just write about things that mean something and that I can write about. There's no point in pretending. — Imelda May

Through it all, Eric didn't say a word. He was innocent, Eric reminded himself, he never participated in the pranks. He never lifted a finger to harm David Hallenback. He didn't think it was funny, so he usually walked away, pretending not to see. But Eric did see. Just like all the other kids in the halls. And he slowly began to recognize it for what it was. — James Preller

It totally was elitist,' Julia says. 'So? There's nothing wrong with elitist. Some stuff is better than other stuff; pretending it's not doesn't make you open-minded, it just makes you a dick. — Tana French

I'll tell them," she said. "I'll tell them it was my fault."
He looked at her, gold eyes incredulous. "You can't lie to them."
"I'm not. I brought you back," she said. "You were dead, and I brought you back. I upset the balance, not you. I opened the door for Lilith and her stupid ritual. I could have asked for anything, and I asked for you." She tightened her grip on his shirt, her fingers white with cold and pressure. "And I would do it again. I love you, Jace Wayland - Herondale - Lightwood - whatever you want to call yourself. I don't care. I love you and I wil always love you, and pretending it could be any other way is just a waste of time. — Cassandra Clare

The song "No Fairy Tale" tells my story. Going through the hard things leads to a richer life than just trying to make everything perfect, or worse, pretending things are good when they don't feel right. I've done that more than enough times. — Lisa Loeb

After I got my coffee, I leaned against a stop sign and sipped, pretending it was a normal day and I was only up this early so that I could go running and not because I'd just been on a killing spree. — Augusten Burroughs

We sing in English, not mimicking some American rock singer's accent. That's just pretending to be something you ain't. — Joe Strummer

I never actually studied an American accent. I never learned it. I never had anybody teach me how to do it. It just kind of happened. I think I probably spent a lot of my childhood in front of my mirror pretending to do Cornflake commercials like the kids I've seen on TV from America. — India De Beaufort

To Poetry"

Don't desert me
just because I stayed up last night
watching The Lost Weekend.

I know I've spent too much time
praising your naked body to strangers
and gossiping about lovers you betrayed.

I've stalked you in foreign cities
and followed your far-flung movements,
pretending I could describe you.

Forgive me for getting jacked on coffee
and obsessing over your features
year after jittery year.

I'm sorry for handing you a line
and typing you on a screen,
but don't let me suffer in silence.

Does anyone still invoke the Muse,
string a wooden lyre for Apollo,
or try to saddle up Pegasus?

Winged horse, heavenly god or goddess,
indifferent entity, secret code, stored magic,
pleasance and half wonder, hell,

I have loved you my entire life
without even knowing what you are
or how - please help me - to find you. — Edward Hirsch

Nobody gives way to anybody. Everyone just angles, points, dives directly toward his destination, pretending it is an all-or-nothing gamble. People glare at one another and fight for maneuvering space. All parties are equally determined to get the right-of-way
insist on it. They swerve away at the last possible moment, giving scant inches to spare. The victor goes forwards, no time for a victory grin, already engaging in another contest of will. Saigon traffic is Vietnamese life, a continuous charade of posturing, bluffing, fast moves, tenacity and surrenders. — Andrew X. Pham

You are born, go to school, and attend university in search of a husband. You get married - even if he is the worse man in the world - just so that others can't say no one wants you. You have children, grow old, and spend the end of your days watching passersby from a chair on the sidewalk, pretending to know everything about life yet unable to silence the voice in your heart that says: "You could try something else. — Paulo Coelho

I didn't just foster the delusions. I lived them. Even after the world crashed, I clung to them. But after he died, I told myself no more. No more brave fronts or false hopes or pretending everything's okay when nothing is. I thought I was being tough by pretending, calling it being optimistic, brave, keeping my head up or whatever bullshit seemed to fit the moment. That's not tough. That's the very definition of soft. — Rick Yancey

But here I was,quasi-boyfriend saying he wanted to take me on an actual date, and I was just staring at him impassively, like a horse watching a mime pretending to walk against the wind. — Maureen Johnson

I guess my parents really screwed me up somewhere along the line because as good as they are to me, as much as they do for me and as much as I love them, I still managed to grow up terrified I would end up just like them. Unhappy and only pretending to live out this wonderful life with two kids, a dog and a white picket fence. But in reality, I knew they sleep with their backs facing each other. — J.A. Redmerski

Sometimes it's called passing out and sometimes it's just pretending to be asleep — Sherman Alexie

Kierkegaard writes, ... riches and abundance come hypocritically clad in sheep's clothing pretending to be security against anxieties and they become then the object of anxiety ... they secure a man against anxieties just about as well as the wolf which is put to tending the sheep secures them ... against the wolf. — Richard J. Foster

You go to work the next day pretending nothing happened.
Your co-workers ask
if everything's okay and you tell them
you're just tired.
And you're trying to smile. And they're trying to smile. — Richard Siken

I saw them standing there pretending to be just friends, when all the time in the world could not pry them apart. — Brian Andreas

I walked back into the studio pretending to be someone who was amazing at reading her own story. I finished an entire paragraph without interruption. Then I looked up and the producer stared at me and said, "I don't know what you just did, but keep doing it." And I said, "I just did a lot of cocaine," and she looked a bit aghast and so I said, "No, I'm just kidding. I just got some really good advice from a friend. — Jenny Lawson

...And there really are men who believe in this, who spend their time in promoting Leagues of Peace, in delivering addresses, and in writing books; and of course the governments sympathize with it all, pretending that they approve of it; just as they pretend to support temperance, while they actually derive the larger part of their income from intemperance; just as they pretend to maintain liberty of the constitution, when it is the absence of liberty to which they owe their power; just as they pretend to care for the improvement of the laboring classes, while on oppression of the workman rest the very foundations of the State; just as they pretend to uphold Christianity, when Christianity is subversive of every government. — Leo Tolstoy

Its like reproaching someone who has no ear for music because he's bored at a symphony concert. Is it fair to blame me because you ascribed to me qualities that I hadn't got? I never tried to deceive you by pretending I was anything I wasn't. I was just pretty and gay. You don't ask for a pearl necklace or a sable coat at a booth in a fair; you ask for a tin trumpet and a toy balloon. — W. Somerset Maugham

I want to have the heart and mind of a queen," she whispered. "I want it more than anything. But I'm only pretending. I can't find the feeling of it inside me."
Fire considered her quietly. You want me to look for it inside you.
"I just want to know," Bitterblue said. "If it's there, it would be a great comfort for me to know."
Fire said, I can tell you already that it's there.
"Really?" Bitterblue whispered.
Queen Bitterblue, Fire said, shall I share with you the feeling of your own strength? — Kristin Cashore

Acting was my classroom in many ways and I always believed and I still do that acting is not just about pretending to be someone else, it's also about discovering yourself and reaching deeper inside yourself. — Kristen Stewart

It's always hard to remember love - years pass and you say to yourself, Was I really in love, or was I just kidding myself? Was I really in love, or was I just pretending he was the man of my dreams? Was I really in love, or was I just desperate? — Nora Ephron

Why, bless your heart. Which is the classic Southern way of pretending to sympathize with someone when you're really just putting the other woman down and driving your stiletto straight through her heart at the same time. — Jennifer Estep

As for the young man carrying the groceries, he was a thin, fair-skinned young man, and I would have said that he had been born in the house. He had the vacant, dog-like expressions that house-born slaves, as I remembered, liked to put on when they were in public with their masters and performing some simple task. This fellow was pretending that the Waitrose groceries were a great burden, but this was just an act, to draw attention to himself and the lady he served. He, too, had mistaken me for an Arab, and when we crossed he had dropped the burdened-down expression and given me a look of wistful inquisitiveness, like a puppy that wanted to play but had just been made to understand that it wasn't playtime. — V.S. Naipaul

They want to make me feel better about dying. To make me feel better about dying gives them a purpose." You pause. "But I'm fine about dying. And they just can't accept that. It takes away their purpose." You sip your tea and flinch. "And I'm buggered if I'm going to waste what's left of my time pretending to be terrified just to fit into someone else's picture of how things should be. I'd rather watch reruns of Dalziel and Pascoe on UK Gold. — Sarah Pinborough

I laughed. "I don't care if you're nice or not. I just want you to be you. No more pretending. I think it's time we all got to know the real Logan Lyke."
"What if I don't know who the real me is?" he asked.
"Then I guess you better find yourself," I smiled. — Micalea Smeltzer

Every day, the pretty boys ask how I'm doing and if anyone is messing around with me - as if anyone else would torture me. It's kind of weird and I think I liked it better when they were just mean to me all the time, as strange as that sounds. Their being nice is like eternally having a boa constrictor around your neck and pretending that it will never choke you to death. — Matthew Quick

Damn it, Emerson, just stop!" he yelled. "Stop pretending you don't care. Why won't you let me in? Why won't you let me care about you? Because for some maddening reason, I do! — Kimberly Lauren

Part of me wants to ignore the wrongness and just believe him, but then I'd be pretending as much as he is. No matter how much I want to deny the truth, it gets more obvious every day that he's a drowning man clinging to a sinking raft. — Anonymous

Harper: In your experience of the world. How do people change?
Mormon Mother: Well it has something to do with God so it's not very nice.
God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching.
Harper: And then up you get. And walk around.
Mormon Mother: Just mangled guts pretending.
Harper: That's how people change. — Tony Kushner

Emma convinced herself she'd lost him because she was fast. She was also adept at convincing herself of things that might not be - good at pretending. She could pretend she took classes at night by choice, and that blushing didn't make her thirsty
A vicious growl sounded. Her eyes widened, but she didn't turn back, just sprinted across the field. She felt claws sink into her anckle a second before she was dragged to the muddy ground and thrown onto her back. A hand covered her mouth, though she'd been trained not to scream.
"Never run from one such as me." Her attacker didn't sound human. "You will no' get away. And we like it." His voice was guttural like a beast's, breaking, yet his accent was ... Scottish? — Kresley Cole

I knew," he murmurs. I can hear him over the music only because he says it right in my ear. "Right after we talked in the mall, I knew."
"Knew what?"
"That you were going to be the first girl to break my heart."
My breath catches. I force the smile now. "I haven't broken anything yet, right?"
"You will. Someday. But everybody breaks everything. For now we're fantastic. It's just, the better we get, the harder I realize the fall will be. — Michelle Painchaud

I distinctly remember watching Daniel Day Lewis in 'My Left Foot,' and my parents were discussing the fact that he's an actor. To me, it was a foreign concept. I was like, 'Someone is pretending to do that? That's so awesome!' After that, it just stayed in the back of my mind. — Dominique McElligott

Imagination is what I have when I'm on my own. Pretending is what I do in the world. There's a space in between those two spaces, maybe like the space between life and death, but it's hard to navigate, and even harder to understand. Then again, I sometimes think that maybe that's just the way life is, and what I've been searching for is something different. — Jane Devin

When I was a kid, I used to pretend to be Bond; I used to make up scenarios and irritate my sister and annoy my mother and father pretending to be someone else, so I kind of was already acting when I was a child. I just didn't really know it. — Aneurin Barnard

I've been living off rats mostly. Can't steal too much food from Hogsmeade; I'd draw attention to myself."
He grinned up at Harry, but Harry returned the grin only reluctantly.
"What're you doing here, Sirius?" he said,
"Fulfilling my duty as godfather," said Sirius, gnawing on the chicken bone in a very dog-like way. "Don't worry about me, I'm pretending to be a loveable stray."
He was still grinning, but seeing the anxiety in Harry's face, said more seriously, "I want to be on the spot. Your last letter... well, let's just say things are getting fishier. — J.K. Rowling

I can't fuck up his whole life and take away everything that means something to him just because I think I've found my soul mate.' 'Yeah, but ... ' 'Yeah, but. I know. Having found my soul mate, how cruel is it for me to stay with Bob, pretending I feel more for him than I do and preventing him from going out and finding someone who loves him the way I love Mark?' 'You can't be responsible for other people's feelings, — Scarlett Thomas

The thing is, you make choices. You do some things and you don't do others and in the end there's not much point in asking what different choices might have gained you, and lost you, unless you have a time machine. You become those choices, you embody them ...
I'd known I couldn't stay, just as I'd known years before I couldn't be with him, even as I'd gone on pretending I had a choice. I was who I was, and I wanted what I already had. — Leah Stewart

You say you just want to be my friend. I know that you mean you want to relate to my mind but not my body. I can understand that and will not ask you to relate to me in a way that you don't want to, or talk to me about subjects you find uncomfortable. But likewise I refuse to castrate myself for you by pretending not to have the feelings I have. If you want me as your friend you will have to accept my penis along with me. — Hugh Prather

Quit the bitching on your blog
And stop pretending art is hard.
Just limit yourself to three chords
And do not practice daily.
You'll minimize some stranger's sadness
With a piece of wood and plastic.
Holy fuck it's so fantastic,
Playing ukulele. — Amanda Palmer

We're all a bunch of badminton birdies who just got batted from the Republican side of the court to the Democrat side. We'll eventually get batted back again, of course, unless libertarians can manage to do something about it. If your principal concern, like mine, is freedom, there's absolutely no discernable difference between the two 'majors,' and for all practical purposes, they're one big party the Boot On Your Neck party pretending to be two. — L. Neil Smith

I had no real idea I was going to become a writer. It was just a game for me. I just liked pretending, daydreaming and imagining. — Rabindranath Maharaj

The disappointments seemed to escape the family's notice, though. That was another of their quirks: they had a talent for pretending that everything was fine. Or maybe it wasn't a quirk at all. Maybe it was just further proof that the Whitshanks were not remarkable in any way whatsoever. — Anne Tyler

Try and travel alone, or - if you are married - with your spouse. It will be harder work, no one will be looking after you, but this is the only way of truly leaving your country. Group travel is just a disguised way of pretending to go abroad, where you speak your own language, obey the leader of the pack, and concern yourself more with the internal gossip of the group than with the place you are visiting. — Paulo Coelho

Anyone who lives in her own world is crazy. Like schizophrenics, psychopaths, maniacs. I mean people who are different from others.'
Like you?'
On the other hand,' Zedka continued, pretending not to have heard the remark, 'you have Einstein, saying that there was no time or space, just a combination of the two. Or Columbus, insisting that on the other side of the world lay not an abyss but a continent. Or Edmund Hillary, convinced that a man could reach the top of Everest. Or the Beatles, who created an entirely different sort of music and dressed like people from another time. Those people
and thousands of others
all lived in their own world. — Paulo Coelho

Lily gave me a nod and a smile. "I wish I could be more like you. You're so confident in who you are."
I had to look away from her eyes full of admiration. "I don't know who I am, Lily. I'm just really good at pretending. — Nicole Williams

She set her hands neatly in her lap. "But you just said he liked you."
"No, I said he enjoys my company. That is, he enjoys hating me. Or pretending to hate me. I don't know which.
But I'm finding it difficult to completely dislike someone who gets pleasure from having me around ... "So he likes being mean to you," she said. "And you like that he likes being mean to you."
"And I like being mean to him, too, don't forget."
"Of course not. Pleasure from meanness. There's a name for it: sadomasochism. — Kristin Walker

I knew it," she snapped. "You're no different from all men. You're just another jerk pretending to be single! I didn't wanna wrap a lie into a Christmas present anyway. — Maha Erwin

Making you believe what he wanted you to believe was his very reason for being. Maybe his only reason. I was intrigued by the way he turned events, or hints I had given him about people, into reality
that is, his kind of reality. This obsessive reinvention of the real never stopped, what-could-be having always to top what is.
...
I began to wonder which was real, the woman in the book or the one I was pretending to be upstairs. Neither of them was particularly "me." I was acting just as much upstairs; I was not myself just as much Maria in the book was not myself. Perhaps she was. I began not to know which was true and which was not, like a writer who comes to believe that he's imagined what he hasn't.
...
The book began living in me all the time, more than my everyday life. — Philip Roth

It's not so much religion per se, it's false certainty that worries me, and religion just has more than its fair share of false certainty or dogmatism. I'm really concerned when I see people pretending to know things they clearly cannot know. — Sam Harris

I think life is just a process of settling for less and pretending you never wanted more." - Elizabeth — Ruth Madison

Because of that she had never had enough energy to be herself, a person who, like everyone else in the world, needed other people in order to be happy. But other people were so difficult. They reacted in unpredictable ways, they surrounded themselves with defensive walls, they behaved just as she did, pretending they didn't care about anything. When someone more open to life appeared, they either rejected them outright or made them suffer, consigning them to being inferior, ingenuous. — Paulo Coelho

I was tired of pretending that I was someone else just to get along with people, just for the sake of having friendships. — Kurt Cobain

Because think how we'll feel in the morning. Think how much worse it will be pretending that we don't mean anything to each other in front of everyone else after we've spent the night together, even if all we do is sleep. It's like having just a little bit of a drug - it only makes you want more. — Cassandra Clare

We are born knowing how to be just. And we die knowing we spent a lifetime pretending we didn't. — Susan Meissner

That I have no idea what good old Dr. Ha-ha-so-fucking-funny Bradley is thinking when he touches your back? When he kisses your hand, pretending it's just a joke, you think I don't know what he's thinking? When he stands close to you, looks into your nice red lips as you talk, when his eyes shimmer at the mention of your name? He's gone soft in the head, you think I don't know? I was the one with the hat in my hands, standing for hours waiting for you to get out of Kirov. What, said Alexander. — Paullina Simons

You're not very good at this," Emma said, laughing at the frustration on Sean's face.
He pulled his hand out from under the back of her T-shirt. "You're distracting me."
"How am I distracting you?" She shook the bag at Sean, reminding him to pull two letter tiles to replace the C and the T he'd used to make CAT.
"You look totally hot. And you did it on purpose so I wouldn't be able to concentrate and you'd win."
Emma laughed. Sure, she'd thrown on baggy flannel boxers and an old Red Sox T-shirt after her shower just to seduce him out of triple-word scores. "You not having a shirt on is distracting. And you keep pretending you want to rub my back so you can peek at my tile rack."
"Nothing wrong with checking out your rack." He craned his neck to see better and she shoved him away. It wasn't easy playing Scrabble sitting side by side on the couch, but after a long workday, neither was willing to take the floor. — Shannon Stacey

Oh, bullshit. This isn't one of those stories, Avice. One moment of cack-handedness, Captain Cook offends the bloody locals, one slip of the tongue or misuse of sacred cutlery, and bang, he's on the grill. Do you ever think about how self-aggrandising that stuff is? Oh, all those stories pretending to be mea culpas about cultural insensitivity, oops, we said the wrong thing, but they're really all about how ridiculous natives overreact. Avice, we must have made thousands of fuckups like that over the years. Think about it. Just like our visitors did when they first met our lot, on Terre. And for the most part we didn't lose our shit, did we? — China Mieville

He was smiling. It was one of those sincere smiles grown-ups give kids when they're trying to get them in arm's reach for something bad. Doctors smile that way right before they give you a shot; teachers look the same just before they tell you they found out what you did. The Big Bad Wolf probably smiled at Red Riding Hood like that when he was pretending to be her grandma. Despite all my mother's flaws including her mean streak, I never once saw that travesty of an expression on her face. — Pat Cadigan