Pretenses Quotes

“She nodded without conviction, wishing she could be so carefree, and not the sort of person for whom an unanswered letter gnawed away at the back of her mind. Nobody liked a stick-in-the-mud...but they liked all the things sticks-in-the-mud did for them, didn't they? They liked not having to worry because someone else, someone who couldn't sleep when she had left a duty unperformed, would make sure that nothing too terrible happened.”

“You might forget,' he said. 'You can't hold on to a person when they're gone. You can't even hold on to people who are alive sometimes. I don't remember my mother's face. Not really. But I tell myself -- I'm still here. So much of who I am and what I do comes from her, I'm remembering her just by living. Every time I tilt my head or pick up a teacup the way she used to, that's a little bit of her still in the world.”

“I don't want to inhabit the human world under false pretenses.”

“If there is no Hell a good many preachers are obtaining money under false pretenses.”

“She hated seeing monsters smile. Monsters should growl and snarl and be done with the pretenses.”

“Regardless of all our pretenses, deep within, we are still unconsciously the same old cave-people.”

“The actions of yesterday, the pretenses of tomorrow, and the presence of now, have forever added to history.”

“We still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry and grasping at the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised to furnish new pretenses for revenue and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without a tribute.”

“Darkness is a knife that peels away the rind of what you think you know about yourself. The shades of your pretenses, the tones of your illusions, the layers of deception that glaze your life into the colors that tint your world–all mean nothing in the darkness. No one can see them, not even you.Darkness hides everything except who you really are”