Pretending Quotes - Page 23

• Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

  J. K. Rowling

  Failure, Energy, Finishing

  J.K. Rowling (2015). “Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination”, p.37, Hachette UK

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• I've worked in an office. People are sitting down doing their stuff, or pretending to do their stuff, and they're bored. I've heard a car tire screech and 30 people went to the window. That was a piece of excitement in their day, that a car might have had to stop quickly, you know. You don't need dinosaurs, you know.

  Ricky Gervais

  People, Car, Office

  "'The Office' Star Ricky Gervais Back with 'Extras'". "Day to Day" with Noah Adams, www.npr.org. September 22, 2005.

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• The war in Afghanistan was fought for feminist reasons, and the Marines were really on this feminist mission. But today, all the women in all these countries have been driven back into medieval situations. Women who were liberated, women who were doctors and lawyers and poets and writers and - you know, pushed back into this Shia set against Sunnis. The U.S. is supporting al-Qaeda militias all over this region and pretending that it's fighting Islam. So we are in a situation that is psychopathic.

  Arundhati Roy

  Country, War, Fighting

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• I was thinking a lot about the aftermath of bad choices, how people deal with the trauma of having survived trauma, if that makes sense, and so I wrote about this character's last day on the job, how after spending 15 years pretending to be a rabbi, he'd in effect become a rabbi.

  Tod Goldberg

  Jobs, Character, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I started out, in the mid-'70s, taking photographs of rock bands that I liked but not because I really wanted to photograph them. Initially, I was pretending to be a photographer, simply so that I could go up to the front of the crowd and be a bit closer to the bands. But, I found I was gradually developing an interest in the photos I took.

  Derek Ridgers

  Rocks, Band, Crowds

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I think the Republican budget priorities are messed up. I salute for the way they're attacking some of the entitlement programs, but they are taking huge cuts, by pretending they're just block-granting it to the states, out of Medicaid, from the least fortunate.

  David Brooks

  Block, Cutting, Thinking

  "Shields and Brooks on Netanyahu’s election provocation, human trafficking holdup". "PBS NewsHour" with Judy Woodruff, www.pbs.org. March 20, 2015.

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• 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

  Song, Perfect, Trying

  "Interview with Grammy-Nominated Singer/Songwriter Lisa Loeb". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• I've been in China enough to know that you shouldn't opine on it unless you speak Chinese and have lived there for twenty years. I wasn't pretending to be a China expert in that final chapter. I was just pointing, first to the parallels between Chinese behavior toward us and ours toward GB when we were at the same stage of development, and secondly to how much harder their development path is than ours was.

  Charles R. Morris

  Years, Chinese, Firsts

  Interview with Bob Morris, bobmorris.biz. December 17, 2012.

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• They say, you know, about evolution, it surely happened because their fossil record shows that. Look, my body and your body are miracles of design. Scientists are pretending they have the answer as how we got this way when natural selection couldn't possibly have produced such machines.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Design, Miracle, Looks

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• It's fine to pretend that people are one-dimensional, like in body size; the problem comes when you forget that you are just pretending.

  L. Todd Rose

  People, Body, Size

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• Those with Anton's syndrome are not pretending they are not blind; they truly believe they are not blind. Their verbal reports, while inaccurate, are not lies. Instead, they are experiencing what they take to be vision, but it is all internally generated.

  David Eagleman

  Lying, Believe, Vision

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”, p.61, Vintage

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• Society is about masks and hiding and pretending to be something that you're not and not opening up, and in acting, you do all of those things, but it also shows the performers in a very raw state. They have to literally upset themselves to get to that position sometimes. You don't need a load of people judging you or not being interested in what you're doing or being an ass on set because it ruins it.

  Ben Wheatley

  Opening Up, People, Judging

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I'd rather live my life knowing that I'm not perfect than spend my whole life pretending to be.

  Will Smith

  Life, Knowing, Perfect

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• A monster is a person who has stopped pretending.

  Colson Whitehead

  Monsters, Persons

  "A Psychotronic Childhood" by Colson Whitehead, www.newyorker.com. June 4, 2012.

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• It was surprising that you could spend hours in the middle of the night pretending things were OK, and know in thirty seconds of daylight that that simply wasn't so.

  Gillian Flynn

  Night, Daylight, Hours

  Gillian Flynn (2009). “Dark Places: A Novel”, p.108, Broadway Books

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• Unfortunately, this past birthday, my son was up the entire night before, very sick with that horrible - I think it was called the Norovirus or whatever the hell that was that was going around. So I got it. And then my husband [Paul Scheer] got it. We were both fighting it because he had planned this whole day for me, and we were both pretending it wasn't happening. We were literally driving ourselves to a massage and facial that he had planned and at one point, I was like, "I can't drive anymore. I need to get in the passenger's seat."

  June Diane Raphael

  Husband, Fighting, Son

  "Grace And Frankie's June Diane Raphael on the joy of calling Donald Trump a 'little bitch'". Interview with Alex McLevy, tv.avclub.com. March 22, 2017.

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• [Paul Scheer] was kind of pretending to not be as sick as he was. And then we almost pulled into this spa when I finally called it and said, "I'm very ill. We need to go home." And he said, "I am, too." He said that he wasn't going to do his treatments, he was going to - by the way, these are great problems to have - he was going to lie in the men's relaxation room in between throwing up. I was like, "This is insane. We're sick, and we need to just acknowledge it. And it sucks that it happened on my birthday, but let's get back into bed."

  June Diane Raphael

  Lying, Home, Men

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• I like to hide behind my intellect. But the truth is, unless all of us start getting honest about what the reality is, things aren't going to change. If we all keep pretending that we know stuff and if everyone else would do what we knew and everything would be a better place, then nothing is going to change.

  Danny Boyle

  Reality, Stuff, Would Be

  Source: www.elle.com

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• I'm a total luddite when it comes to technology. Pretending I know how to use a computer is a challenge.

  Ben Schnetzer

  Technology, Challenges, Use

  Source: collider.com

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• Certainly I've lived my whole life through my imagination. But the world of imagination is there for all of us--a sense of play, of pretending, of wonder. It's there with us as we live.

  Jim Henson

  Play, Imagination, World

  Jim Henson (2007). “Wisdom from It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider”, p.49, Peter Pauper Press, Inc.

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• Be real, because a mask only fools people on the outside. Pretending to be someone you're not takes a toll on the real you, and the real you is more important than anyone else.

  Alex Gaskarth

  Real, People, Important

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• When you get many opportunities early on, and you have people who have been working for a while counting on you, you have to at least pretend that you know what you're doing. So any actor that's pretending, you start to develop philosophies. Without years and years of experience, you kind of go with an attitude that you know what you're doing. And so I think right around that time, I was kind of at the peak of rigidly thinking that I knew how to work in film in a way that I wanted to. Cameron was extremely patient and generous with me.

  Billy Crudup

  Attitude, Philosophy, Opportunity

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• The most significant piece of advice my father gave me early on about acting was, don't get caught acting. Really believe in what you're doing and then commit to it. Even if it feels uncomfortable, even if you feel that you're gonna look like an ass. It's all acting, but find the truth in a moment as opposed to just pretending you have and rather than trying to act your way out of it.

  Kiefer Sutherland

  Father, Believe, Advice

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• Let's be the people who look at the hurting until we hurt with them. No hurrying past, turning away, or shifting of eyes. No pretending or glossing over. Let's look at the face until we see the person.

  Max Lucado

  Hurt, Eye, Past

  Max Lucado (2011). “Live Loved: Experiencing God's Presence in Everyday Life”, p.84, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• True religion is not about possessing the truth. No religion does that. It is rather an invitation into a journey that leads one toward the mystery of God. Idolatry is religion pretending that it has all the answers.

  John Shelby Spong

  Journey, Religion, Doe

  "Q&A on The Parliament of the World's Religions". Weekly mailing, September 5, 2007.

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