They Pretend They Care Quotes & Sayings

I wanted the world to sit back, listen up, and let me explain to it that when someone is sad and hopeless, the last thing they need to feel is that they are the only ones in the world with that feeling. So, if you feel sorry for someone, don't pretend to be happy. Don't pretend to care only about their problems. — John Corey Whaley

The hungry and the homeless don't care about liberty any more than they care about cultural heritage. To pretend that they do care is cant. — E. M. Forster

Whether we make our own money or rely on someone else, many of us would rater pretend our financial matters don't exist. Or we hope they'll just take care of themselves somehow. My ex-husband was like that. He always said, "I bank by prayer. I go to the ATM and pray that money will come out. — Nancy Levin

Art communities and music scenes want to pretend like they don't care, but they will also tell you louder and more frequently than anyone that they DON'T CARE. — Carrie Brownstein

Serious writers pretend they don't care about film adaptations of their work, but it's a colossal lie: We all care. — Jean Hanff Korelitz

Don't pretend you don't like it when I treat you as a lady."
"Maybe I don't."
Despite that, he still opened the car door for me, with his lips curving up into a careless grin. "Girls always do that," he said, " - pretend they think you're taking their independence from them if you open a door. But that's not the case."
"Well, what is the case?" I sat down on the front seat - leaving my feet on the driveway.
"Simply that we're demonstrating good-breeding; showing the girl we're worthy and capable of taking care of her - that we're polite, considerate and nurturing."
I folded my arms. "Women don't need nurturing - or to be taken care of. We can fend for ourselves. We're equal to men, you know. — A.M. Hudson

No one washes their hands after they piss unless they're in a public place. If I'm at the airport, or a restaurant, and someone else is there, I'll soap up for the sake of civilization, but it's only for show, I don't really care if I have ultraviolet traces of urine or feces on my hands. But, if I see someone walk oudda the men's without soaping up I'll think he's deranged, borderline psychotic. At least pretend that washing your hands matters. You know, for the sake of civilization. — Shannon Lyndsy

I figured I could get a job at a filling station somewhere, putting gas and oil in people's cars. I didn't care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn't know me and I didn't know anybody. I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they'd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They'd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I'd be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody'd think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they'd leave me alone. — J.D. Salinger

She introduces me to a nurse as the Best Friend. The impersonal article is more intimate. It tells me that they are intimate, the nurse and my friend.
'I was telling her we used to drink Canada Dry ginger ale and pretend were were in Canada'
'That's how dumb we were,' I say.
'You could be sisters,' the nurse says.
So how come, I'll bet they are wondering, it took me so long to get to such a glorious place? But do they ask?
They do not ask.
Two months, and how long is the drive?
The best I can explain it is this - I have a friend who worked one summer in a mortuary. He used to tell me stories. The one that really got to me was not eh grisliest, but it's the one that did. A man wrecked his care on 101 going south. He did not lose consciousness. But his arm was taken down to the bone - and when he looked at it - it scared him to death.
I mean, he died.
So I hadn't dared to look any closer. But now I'm doing it - and hoping that I will live through it. — Amy Hempel

But if the gods do not exist at all - then we are lost,' I said.
On the contrary - we are found!' said Aesop.
But when we are afraid, who can we turn to, if not the gods?'
Ourselves. We turn to ourselves anyway. We only pretend there are gods and that they care about us. It is a comforting falsehood. — Erica Jong

We are all weird in our own unique ways. The weirdest of all are the people who pretend to act normal in order to please people they don't know or care about, — Natasha Palmer

Are we not all of us fanatics? I say only what you of the U.S.A. pretend you do not know. Attachments are of great seriousness. Choose your attachments carefully. Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care. What you wish to sing of as tragic love is an attachment not carefully chosen. Die for one person? This is a craziness. Persons change, leave, die, become ill. They leave, lie, go mad, have sickness, betray you, die. Your nation outlives you. A cause outlives you. — David Foster Wallace

Still I have a favor to ask of them. When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing, - then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing. And if you do this, I and my sons will have received justice at your hands. — Plato

...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

Oh, Marx,' Amanda sighed. 'You're so melodramatic. So what if it's this way or that way? When I was in convent school I used to stare out the windows at the clouds. I used to chase butterflies in the Mother Superior's flower patch. Those clouds and those butterflies, they didn't know secular from religious
and they didn't care.' 'I'm neither a cloud nor a butterlfy,' I snapped. 'We're all the same as clouds and butterflies. We just pretend to be something different. — Tom Robbins

The panicked feeling of a guilty conscience never squeezes at your heart or wakes you in the middle of the night. Despite your lifestyle, you never feel irresponsible, neglectful, or so much as embarrassed, although for the sake of appearances, sometimes you pretend that you do. For example, if you are a decent observer of people and what they react to, you may adopt a lifeless facial expression, say how ashamed of your life you are, and talk about how rotten you feel. This you do only because it is more convenient to have people think you are depressed than it is to have them shouting at you all the time, or insisting that you get a job. You notice that people who do have a conscience feel guilty when they harangue someone they believe to be "depressed" or "troubled." As a matter of fact, to your further advantage, they often feel obliged to take care of such a person. — Martha Stout

But when you get down to it, it's all a lie. You sit here writing and writing, but no one can see it - that's arrogant, I told you so before. And you aren't even honest enough to let yourself be what you are - everything's divided off and split up. So what's the use of patronising me and saying: You're in a bad phase. If you're not in a bad phase, then it's because you can't be in a phase, you take care to divide yourself into compartments. If things are a chaos, then that's what they are. I don't think there's a pattern anywhere - you are just making patterns, out of cowardice. I think people aren't good at all, they are cannibals, and when you get down to it no one cares about anyone else. All the best people can be good to one other person or their families. But that's egotism, it isn't being good. We aren't any better than the animals, we just pretend to be. — Doris Lessing

There were Italian neighbourhood and Vietnamese neighbourhoods in this city; there are Chinese ones and Ukrainian ones and Pakistani ones and Korean ones and African ones. Name a region on the planet and there's someone from there, here. All of them sit on Ojibway land, but hardly any of them know it or care because that genealogy is wilfully untraceable except in the name of the city itself. They'd only have to look, though, but it could be that what they know hurts them already, and what if they found out something even more damaging? These are people who are used to the earth beneath them shifting, and they all want it to stop-and if that means they must pretend to know nothing, well, that's the sacrifice they make. — Dionne Brand

I'll take care of my mother," he said grimly. "I love her, but she doesn't run my life."
"Yeah, that's what we all say. You. Me. Lucy." She stabbed the stick into the dirt. "These are powerful women. They're sane, they're smart, they rule their worlds, and they love us ferociously. A potent combination that makes it touch to pretend they're normal mothers. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

I do not care what you do, and that is hard for you to hear. Yet do you care what your children do when you send them out to play? Is it a matter of consequence to you whether they play tag, or hide and seek, or pretend? No, it is not, because you know they are perfectly safe. You have placed them in an environment which you consider friendly and very okay. — Neale Donald Walsch

Never trust someone that claims they care nothing of what society thinks of them. Instead of conquering obstacles, they simply pretend they don't exist. — Tiffany Madison

Sometimes they threaten you with something - something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, "Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to So-and-so." And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself, and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You WANT it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care is yourself. — George Orwell

Care for each person you meet as if you secretly know they are going to die tomorrow but they don't know it yet. They need your compassion. Or, if that is too morbid, pretend you are their mother. My baby! — Anonymous

It felt like we were reliving the first day of the school year, when students and teachers do the get-to-know-you dance - teachers tell students something about who they are, students pretend to care, and then vice-versa. — Tucker Elliot

I think Berklee College of Music had the highest dropout rate of any college - or pretend college - in the United States. Because I think most people think they're going to be in Green Day or whatever, and you actually have to learn about music you don't care for, too. I mean, I cared for a great deal of music; it's just that I didn't want to submerge myself into the well of fusion jazz. — Brendon Small

Now, please don't tell me you don't care about how you look and that there's more to you than your appearance. There are two kinds of people in this world : people who want to be desired, and people who want to be desired so much that they pretend they don't. — Rabih Alameddine

And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself. — George Orwell

As a young girl, I used to dream of giving an interview. You dream of stardom as a kid. People think they don't want to be stars. Everyone wants to be a star! That's the truth. Even grownups; they pretend they don't want to be one and don't care. But everyone wants to. — Sania Mirza

Something that is very hard to learn and accept about real life is that a lot of people, a surprising number of people, don't really care about anyone but themselves. They pretend to care, and they can go through the motions a little bit for a little while, but when real and sad things happen that last longer than a few days, they lose interest fast. It is best to not have these people be your best friends, because they are terrible. Unfortunately, they are everywhere, and, to make things worse, they sometimes procreate. — Katie Heaney

We all die someday," Nick muttered as he moved off into the darkness.
"Yeah, but I'd rather my obituary didn't lead with 'He broke into a jail museum and then died,'" Digger grumbled as he trailed after.
"At least it would read 'with his friends,'" Doc added.
"If I wanted to die with you jokers, I would have done it in Afghanistan!"
Nick and Owen both stopped and wheeled on Doc and Digger. "Will you at least pretend that you care we're doing something illegal here?" Nick hissed.
Doc and Digger muttered apologies, and they carried on. — Abigail Roux

If you are going through something with one of your parents, you know that there is this feeling inside you constantly that something is wrong. Even if you want to pretend that it doesn't matter to you or you don't care, the truth of the matter is that you do, because they are your parents and you love them. — Brad Goreski

That's the thing people forget when they start talking about things in terms of good and evil. For us, the places we went were home. We didn't care if they were good or evil or neutral or what. We cared about the fact that for the first time, we didn't have to pretend to be something we weren't. We just got to be. — Seanan McGuire