Some people have a difficult time facing truth and reality. They prefer to live in a make-believe world, pretending that certain things aren’t happening.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.

I re-invented my image so many times that I’m in denial that I was originally an overweight Korean woman.

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.

The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.

It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?

Spiritual people don’t float around all day on clouds of glory; they live in the real world and deal with real issues in real ways.

Therapy? I don’t need that. The roles that I choose are my therapy.

I definitely don’t plead guilty to being a heartthrob.

I try not to think about my life. I have no life. I need therapy.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

I have a terrifying long list of fears. Literally everything – diseases, spiders… and people getting tired of me.

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we’d been saying they were.

I’m afraid the SS’s relationship with the Catholic Church is something the Church still has to deal with and does not deny.

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

I would wear the blue overalls of the fieldworker and often wore round, rimless glasses known as Mazzawati teaglasses. I had a car, and I wore a chauffeur’s cap with my overalls. The pose of chauffeur was convenient because I could travel under the pretext of driving my master’s car.

It may easily come to pass that a vain man may become proud and imagine himself pleasing to all when he is in reality a universal nuisance.

Because we’re actors we can pretend and fake it, but I’d rather the intimate investment was authentic.

I am not a crook.

A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.

Acting is a nice childish profession – pretending you’re someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.

Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

God is, even though the whole world deny him. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.

What I’m denying is that I’m this cutthroat financier.

People who lie to themselves about investing are the same as overweight people who blame their genes for their obesity.

The world is full of people with different characters and temperaments. We all have a dark side, a tendency to manipulate, and aggressive desires. The most dangerous types are those who repress their desires or deny the existence of them, often acting them out in the most underhanded ways.

When people are taken out of their depths they lose their heads, no matter how charming a bluff they may put up.

A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

We were the first generation to have to deal with the modern stardom of football. Some handled it better than others.

There are people in the world who have skills and strength and talent that I will never have. Never. These notions that you can ‚be whatever you want to be as long as you want it bad enough‘ are not true. They are fairy tales.

When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.

It’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.

I go through a lot of depression, and I know other people do, too, but I have an outlet that so many people don’t. If you have that inside of you and can’t get it out, what do you do?

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

People who think you could wave a magic wand and the legacy of the past will be over are blind.

Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.

Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune.

The thing about the truth is, not a lot of people can handle it.

My mother was a professional sick person; she took a lot of pain pills. There are many people like that. It’s just how they are used to getting attention. I always remember she’s the daughter of alcoholics who’d leave her alone at Christmas time.

It’s all make believe, isn’t it?

I was ill, and everyone could see it but me.

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

I have owed you this letter for a very long time-but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.

Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either.

The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort? Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that’s making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?

Lightning is something which, again, we would rather avoid.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

Time travel was once considered scientific heresy, and I used to avoid talking about it for fear of being labelled a ‚crank.‘

From my close observation of writers… they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.

Don’t hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft.

We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love – first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.

Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.

I think in defeat you grope for things that are happy, and it’s hard.

By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.