You’ve always lived a life of pretense, not a real life– a simulated existence, not a genuine existence. Everything about you, everything you are, has always been pretense, never genuine, never real.

When you know the inside stories, no matter how good looks the cover, you just cannot appreciate it…

I might appear confident and chatty, but I spend most of my time laughing at jokes I don’t find funny, saying things I don’t really mean – because at the end of the day that’s...

It’s not necessary to tell all you know. It’s not ladylike–in the second place, folks don’t like to have somebody around knowin’ more than they do.

By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You shewed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.

We always need a sound reason to move on, and we always pretend to have it.

When we need reasons to do something, we pretend to have it.

I am hard to disgust, but a pretentious poet can do it

…pretention is very close to stupidity and that simplicity has a less visible but still gratifying aspect.