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.

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

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

I hate pain, despite my ability to tolerate it beyond all known parameters, which is not necessarily a good thing.

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

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

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

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

By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.

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

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

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

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

In one way, I suppose, I have been ‚in denial‘ for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light.

It’s all make believe, isn’t it?

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.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?

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

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.

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.

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

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

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

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

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.

Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.

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

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.

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.

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.

I am not a crook.

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

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.

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.

There are plenty of recommendations on how to get out of trouble cheaply and fast. Most of them come down to this: Deny your responsibility.

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

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

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

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

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

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?

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

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

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

These things bring you to reality as to how fragile you are; at the same moment you are doing something that nobody else is able to do. The same moment that you are seen as the best, the fastest and somebody that cannot be touched, you are enormously fragile.

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.

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

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.

Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.

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.

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