“You bought the girls drinks and you stared at their perfect bodies and you pretended that they liked you. And they pretended that they liked you, too. When you stopped spending money, they got up and pretended that they liked someone else.”

— George Alec Effinger , book When Gravity Fails

Source: When Gravity Fails (1986), Chapter 1 (p. 4).

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George Alec Effinger 59

Novelist, short story writer 1947–2002

Diana Wynne Jones book Fire and Hemlock

Source: Fire and Hemlock (1985), p. 29.

“A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar— you pretend it's not there.”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

Misattributed
Source: Darryl Hannah http://www.idolpleasures.com/daryl_hannah.shtml.

“What's terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is the first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.”

Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook

Anna Wulf, in "Free Women: 2"
Source: The Golden Notebook (1962)
Context: It seems to me like this. It's not a terrible thing — I mean, it may be terrible, but it's not damaging, it's not poisoning, to do without something one really wants. It's not bad to say: My work is not what I really want, I'm capable of doing something bigger. Or I'm a person who needs love, and I'm doing without it. What's terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is the first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.