Charade Quotes

“Whenever a homeless person speaks to me in the USA, I always assume that I am speaking to a police officer and play along with the suspected charade.”

“The future is never fixed, but always in flux until the moment it meets with the present.”

“You have been given a great power. But no power comes without a price. That is how magic works. How the universe works. All things kept in balance.”

“We may be a little broken these days but I wouldn't trade it for anything.”

“Nope, there wasn't any getting out of this. Real first name meant business.”

“So Santa Claus is bogus but Grim Reapers are the genuine article. What does that say about the world?”

“If [Patricia Highsmith] saw an acquaintance walking down the sidewalk she would deliberately cross over so as to avoid them. When she came in contact with people, she realised she split herself into many different, false, identities, but, because she loathed lying and deceit, she chose to absent herself completely rather than go through such a charade. Highsmith interpreted this characteristic as an example of 'the eternal hypocrisy in me', rather her mental shape-shifting had its source in her quite extraordinary ability to empathise. Her imaginative capacity to subsume her own identity, while taking on the qualities of those around her - her negative capability, if you like - was so powerful that she said she often felt like her inner visions were far more real than the outside world. She aligned herself with the mad and the miserable, 'the insane man who feels himself one with all mankind, all life, because in losing his mind, he has lost his ego, his self-ness', yet realised that such a state inspired her fiction. Her ambition, she said, was to write about the underlying sickness of this 'daedal planet' and capture the essence of the human condition: eternal disappointment.”

“I´ve blown it, the whole grisly charade.”

“That's how birthdays were in our house. All hateful charades of pretty clothes, expensive presents, and ugly words . . .”