Quotes about trick
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“Can a person steal happiness? Or is just another internal, infernal human trick?”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

Personality, Happiness

“I believe in low lights and trick mirrors.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Light

“Be cunning, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed.”

Richard Adams book Watership Down

Source: Watership Down

People

“Time continued to pass - the oldest trick in the world, and maybe the only one that really is magic.”

Stephen King book Different Seasons

Source: Different Seasons

World, Time

“We never stop investigating. We are never satisfied that we know enough to get by. Every question we answer leads on to another question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species.”

Desmond Morris (1928) English zoologist, ethologist and surrealist painter

Question

“Nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Source: Nature and Selected Essays

Color, Nature, Holiday

“If you smile, even if you’re feeling bad, the action of the muscles will trick your brain into thinking you’re happy”

Candace Bushnell book The Carrie Diaries

Source: The Carrie Diaries

Smile, Feeling, Thinking, Happiness

“We never sit anything out. We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.”

Ray Bradbury book Zen in the Art of Writing

Variant: We never sit anything out. We are cups, quietly and constantly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.
Source: Zen in the Art of Writing (1990) 
Context: From now on I hope always to educate myself as best I can. But lacking this, in future I will relaxedly turn back to my secret mind to see what it has observed when I thought I was sitting this one out. We never sit anything out. We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

Beauty

“If you’re really hard up, I can introduce you to my grandmother. She’s a fan.” Adam blinked. “She doesn’t typically sleep with pretty young things, but she would make an exception in your case. You might even learn a trick or two.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Burn for Me

Sleep, Learning

“In every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce. The trick is to find and continue to find grounds for marriage.”

Robert Anderson (1917–2009) American playwright, screenwriter, and theater producer

Marriage

“This is exactly what i wanted, as commitments had never really been my thing. And it wasn't like it was hard, either. The only trick was never giving more than you were willing to lose.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

“Everyone suffers at least one bad betrayal in their lifetime. It’s what unites us. The trick is not to let it destroy your trust in others when that happens. Don’t let them take that from you.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

Suffering, Betrayal

“And she tricked us into taking walkie-talkie rings she could listen in on,” Simon said. “I wouldn’t trust her further than I could throw a medium-sized elephant.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

“The trick is to learn to see with your heart, not with your eyes”

Alyson Nöel (1965) writer

Source: Cruel Summer

Learning, Heart

“The real trick in life is to want nothing, and to succeed in getting it.

- Karla”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Life

“You've managed-- in our short three years together-- to kill not only my god, but my father, my brother, and my fiance. That's kind of like a homicidal hat trick. It's a strange foundation for a relationship, wouldn't you say?”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Hero of Ages

God

“That is the trick of good government. To make folk desire to live in such a way that there is no need for its intervention.”

Robin Hobb book Assassin's Apprentice

Source: Assassin's Apprentice

Way

“One thing I've learnt recently: how to think nothing. Here's the trick: don't have any interest in the world around you, don't have any hope for the future, and be warm.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

World, Hope, Thinking, Future

“I'm not a very happy person," I told him."But sometimes I can trick myself into thinking I am.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd

Thinking, Personality, Happiness

“The trick… is to find the balance between the bright colors of humor and the serious issues of identity, self-loathing, and the possibility for intimacy and love when it seems no longer possible or, sadder yet, no longer necessary.”

Wendy Wasserstein (1950–2006) American playwright

Love, Color

“I felt deeply tricked. Stunned. And furious. I also felt my default emotion: numbness.”

Augusten Burroughs book Running with Scissors

Source: Running with Scissors

“Would you mind getting off that fly paper and giving the flies a chance?"
"Ahhh, you can't trick me! Flies don't read papers!”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

Chance, Reading, Flying

“It is wonderful what tricks our dreams play us, and how conveniently we can imagine.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

Dreams, Imagination

“Mind your own Brazilian!" The words fly out of my mouth before I can stop them. Oops.

OK. The trick when you've said something embarrassing by mistake is to pretend nothing happened.”

Sophie Kinsella book I've Got Your Number

Source: I've Got Your Number

Flying

“I don't-" I shake my head. (…)
"What? What were you going to say?" This is another trick of shrinks. They never let you stop in midthought. If you open your mouth, they want to know exactly what you had the intention of saying.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

“I may not be as stong as I think, but I know many tricks and I have resolution.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Old Man and the Sea

Source: The Old Man and the Sea

Thinking

“Self-consciousness, that's what it is. Always my abiding vice. I keep seeing myself. Me watching myself watching others watch me. How do you lose that? What's the trick?”

Stephen Fry book Making History

Source: Making History

“The trick to surviving an interrogation is patience. Don’t offer up anything. Don’t explain. Answer the question and only the question that is asked so you don’t accidentally put your head in a noose.”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Source: The Impossible Knife of Memory

Question, Patience

“Time can play all sorts of tricks on you. In the blink of an eye, babies appear in carriages, coffins disappear into the ground, wars are won and lost, and children transform, like butterflies, into adults.”

Brian Selznick book The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Source: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

War, Children, Appearance, Time

“You know, those parlor tricks would be much more impressive if they actually helped me. (Danger)
I wanted to see what you had in you. (Alexion)
Piss and vinegar. Next time you don’t help me, I’ll unleash it fully against you. (Danger)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Sins of the Night

Time, Help

“Guilt's just your ego's way of tricking you into thinking that you're making moral progress. Don't fall for it, my dear.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Way, Thinking

“I was completely astonished by the beauty of nature. Our eyes see just a small fraction of the light in the world. It is a trick to make a colored world, which does not exist outside of human beings.”

Albert Hofmann (1906–2008) Swiss chemist

World, Beauty, Color, Nature

“Not wanting anyone to pop my bubble by speaking to me, I immediately began reading Lesbian Nuns, and that did the trick. No one attempted small talk.”

John Waters (1946) American filmmaker, actor, comedian and writer

Source: Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters

Reading

“It's no trick loving somebody at their best. Love is loving them at their worst.”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

Love

“If I finish a book a week, I will read only a few thousand books in my lifetime, about a tenth of a percent of the contents of the greatest libraries of our time. The trick is to know which books to read.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Books, Time, Reading

“You can't teach an old dogma new tricks.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: Attributed to Parker after her death, by Robert E. Drennan The Algonquin Wits (1968), p. 124. However the same quip appears anonymously fifteen years earlier, in the trade journal Sales Management (Chicago: Dartnell Corp., 1918-75), vol. 70 (Survey of Buying Power, 1953), p. 80: "Marxism never changes. You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks."

“The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.”

Harlan Ellison book Strange Wine

Voices of Vision: Creators of Science Fiction and Fantasy, page 182 https://books.google.com/books/about/Voices_of_Vision.html?id=Nu4vUZT-7ToC&hl=en Source: Strange Wine

“I've never seen such a collection of idiots in my whole life.' Doolittle shook his head. 'If you participate in this lunacy, y'all will get yourselves killed. Then don't come crying to me.'
Now that would be a neat trick.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Strikes

Life, Cry

“No big deal. We all have blood in us, the trick is keeping it inside.”

Jeff Lindsay book Dexter Is Delicious

Source: Dexter Is Delicious

“If I could not be persuaded into doing what I thought wrong, I will never be tricked into it.”

Jane Austen book Northanger Abbey

Source: Northanger Abbey

“Remember this also: it’s always easy to look back and see what we were, yesterday, ten years ago. It is hard to see what we are. If you can master that trick, you’ll get along.”

Harper Lee book Go Set a Watchman

Source: Go Set a Watchman

“Miracles occur,
If you dare to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait's
begun again,
The long wait for the angel,
For that rare, random descent.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Angels, Waiting

“The trick is not how much pain you feel--but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Life, Pain, Feeling, Joy

“What's the trick to remembering that a sandwich is masculine? What qualities does it share with anyone in possession of a penis? I'll tell myself that a sandwich is masculine because if left alone for a week or two, it will eventually grow a beard.”

David Sedaris book Me Talk Pretty One Day

Source: Me Talk Pretty One Day

“The trick to having obedient, unquestioning children was to have death be the other option”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

Death, Children

“A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.”

Ingrid Bergman (1915–1982) Film actress from Sweden

"Webster's Electronic Quotebase," ed. Keith Mohler, 1994

love, Cute, Romantic, Valentine's Day

“Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're trying to be so quiet.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Blonde on Blonde (1966), Visions of Johanna
Source: Lyrics: 1962-2001

Night

“You can't make any one person your world. The trick is to take what each can give you and build a world from it.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

World, Personality

“Macon: “It’s true. And if that doesn’t work, use the Jedi Mind Trick. But only if you really have to.”
Halley: “The what?”
Macon: “The Jedi Mind Trick.” He looked at me. “Didn’t you ever see Star Wars?”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Someone Like You

War, Star

“Weapons are allowed. Dirty tricks are expected. But try not to kill anybody!” Tantalus smiled at us like we were all naughty children. “Any killing will result in harsh punishment. No s’mores at the campfire for a week! Now ready your chariots!”

Rick Riordan book The Sea of Monsters

Source: The Sea of Monsters

Children, Smile

“You go on. You just go on. There's nothing more to it, and there's no trick to make it easier. You just go on.”

Lois McMaster Bujold book Memory

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Memory (1996)
Context: "You go on. You just go on. There's nothing more to it, and there's no trick to make it easier. You just go on."
"And what do you find on the other side? When you go on?"
"Your life again. What else?"
"Is that a promise?"
"It's an inevitability. No trick. No choice. You just go on."

“She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theatre curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air.”

Raymond Chandler book The Big Sleep

Source: The Big Sleep

“You can't argue with the fools in the world. It's better to let them have their way, then trick them when they're not paying attention.”

Terry Goodkind (1948) American novelist

World, Fools, Way

“How do we thank an angel? Somehow I don’t think a fruit basket will do the trick." ~ Amun”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Secret

Angels, Thinking

“Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all of the tricks and has nothing to say.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

Art, Learning

“What started off as a party trick for the former builder has turned into an industry with requests from all over the world from people who want their likeness immortalised by one man's (not so big) penis.”

Pricasso (1949) Australian painter

[Jani Meyer, Pricasso's creative party trick, Sunday Tribune, South Africa, 10 February 2008, 3, Independent Online]
About

People, World

“At Wal-Mart, a co-worker once advised me that, although I had a lot to learn, it was also important not to "know too much," or at least never to reveal one's full abilities to management, because "the more they think you can do, the more they'll use you and abuse you." My mentors in these matters were not lazy; they just understood that there are few or no rewards for heroic performance. The trick lies in figuring out how to budget your energy so there'll be some left over for the next day.”

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941) American writer and journalist

Evaluation (p. 195)
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America (2001)

Thinking, Learning

“We may also fitly remember that Satan has his miracles, which, though they are deceitful tricks rather than true powers, are such a sort as to mislead the simple-minded and untutored [Thes, 2:9-10] … Idolatry has been nourished by wonderful miracles, yet these are not sufficient to sanction the superstition either of magicians or of idolators.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Prefatory Address, McNeill (ed.), Institutes, p. 17; as quoted in ibid, p.222

“What surprised me, which Google was part of, is that superficial search techniques over large bodies of stuff could get you what you wanted. I grew up in the AI tradition, where you have a complete conceptual model, and the information retrieval tradition, where you have complex vectors of key terms and Boolean queries. The idea that you can index billions of pages and look for a word and get what you want is quite a trick. To put it in more abstract terms, it's the power of using simple techniques over very large numbers versus doing carefully constructed systematic analysis.”

Terry Winograd (1946) American computer scientist

"Talking with Terry Winograd" http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/interviews/t_winograd_1.html, Ubiquity 3 (23), 29 July 2002.

Search, Idea, Parting

“I believe that the greatest trick of the devil is not to get us into some sort of evil but rather have us wasting time. This is why the devil tries so hard to get Christians to be religious. If he can sink a man's mind into habit, he will prevent his heart from engaging God.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

God, Evil, Time, Heart

“All the mystery and wisdom of the Masters, when it’s out in the daylight, doesn’t amount to so much, you know. Tricks of the trade—wonderful illusions. But people don’t want to know that. They want the illusions, the mysteries. Who can blame them? There’s so little in life that’s beautiful or worthy.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

“Dragonfly” (p. 199)
Earthsea Books, Tales from Earthsea (2001)

Life, Wisdom, People, Beauty

“The greatest trick the rich — and their cheerleaders on the right — ever pulled was convincing the world that class didn’t exist. Out here in the real world, it is more real and more rigid than it has been for a century.”

Johann Hari (1979) British journalist

Britain - a caste society?, JohannHari.com, January 29, 2006, 2007-01-26 http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=789,

World

“Of course the modern detective story puts off its best tricks till the last, but Doyle always put his best tricks first and that's why they're still the best ones.”

Rex Stout (1886–1975) American writer

Rex Stout, page 251
Invitation to Learning

“The tendency was to sell families as units, if for no other reason [than] to keep the slaves contented. The gangs in transit were usually a cheerful lot, though the presence of a number of the more vicious type sometimes made it necessary for them all to go in chains. At the other extreme, when the Central of Georgia railroad company in 1858 equipped a Negro sleeping car to assist in the slave trade it set a standard not always maintained in a later generation. When on the block, the slave was as likely to hinder as to help in his sale. Some, out of a vain conceit in bringing a high price, would boast of their physical prowess, in which case an unwary purchaser would likely be cheated. Others would malinger, because of a grudge against owners or traders or in order to bring a low price and be put at less tiring labor. Dealers, also, adopted the tricks of horse traders to make their merchants more attractive -- the greasiest Negro was generally considered the healthiest.”

W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-based political theorist

The Making of America (1986)

Family, Cars, Sleep, Help

“Psychology is familiar with the “eternal victim,” who exploits this position for disguised aggressions. Also belonging to this category, in a broader sense, are those permanent losers as well as medical and political hypochondriacs who lament that conditions are so terrible that it is a great sacrifice on their part not to kill themselves or emigrate. On the German Left, not least of all under the influence of the sociologized schema of the victim, a certain type of renegade has emerged who feels that it is a dirty trick to have to live in this land without summer and without oppositional forces. Nobody can say that such a viewpoint does not know what it is talking about. Its mistake is that it remains blind to itself. For the accusation becomes bound to misery and magnifies it under the subterfuge of unsuspecting critical observations. With the obstinacy of a Sophist, in aggressive self-reification, many a “critical” consciousness refuses to become healthier than the sick whole.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 58

Feeling, Sense, Summer, Parting

“"Arrh! Stars and Mud, ever conjugate, a Paradox to consider, — one…for the Astronomer-Royal, perhaps?" His current scheme being, to assail Maskelyne's Sanity, by now and then posing to him Questions that will not bear too much cogitating upon, — most lately, Über Bernouillis Brachistochronsprobleme, 1702 by Baron von Boppdörfer ("Mind like a Spanish Blade. Read it at the Risk of your Self-Esteem.") having almost done the Trick.”

Thomas Pynchon Mason & Dixon

Source: Mason & Dixon (1997), Chapter 74

Star, Question, Reading

““Am I hired?”
“There is no legal way you can get me out of paying that much of my taxes.”
“On the contrary, Mr. Wiggin. The tax laws are designed to trick people into paying more than they have to. That way the rich who are in the know get to take advantage of drastic tax breaks, while those who don’t have such good connections and haven’t yet found an accountant who does are tricked into paying ludicrously higher amounts.””

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Page 188
Ender's Game series, First Meetings in the Enderverse (2003), Investment Counselor

People, Law, Way

“When you reach for a star
Only angels are there
And it's not very far
Just a step on a stair
Take a look at those clowns
And the tricks that they play
In the circus of life
Life is bitter and gay There are clowns in the night
Clowns everywhere
See how they run
Run from despair …”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

This was a song written for the soundtrack of The Magician of Lublin (1979), based on the 1960 novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer; Kate's singing of it appears at times in the background within the film - YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkfbkVKmbG0 Song lyrics, Singles and rarities

Life, Angels, Star, Despair

“They're a migratory tribe, so you find them everywhere […] They're hardy, longevitous, resistant to infection by disease or new ideas, little modified by regional influences. The accent drifts a bit, maybe. The dialect adapts itself to the local patois: but that's a chameleon's trick: protective colouring, no more. The rest of it, the sinuous mind, the easy passion, the leery eye, the ready smile, the fine, swaggering, billycock-and-shillelagh walk, the flexible moralities, the bel canto oratory, the black bilious angers, these never change.”

Morris West (1916–1999) Australian writer

Martin Gregory in Ch. 1 (on Irish politicians)
Cassidy (1986)

Disease, Smile, Idea, Passion

“Years ago I read a man named Machado de Assis who wrote a book called Dom Casmurro. Machado de Assis is a South American writer — black father, Portuguese mother — writing in 1865, say. I thought the book was very nice. Then I went back and read the book and said, Hmm. I didn’t realize all that was in that book. Then I read it again, and again, and I came to the conclusion that what Machado de Assis had done for me was almost a trick: he had beckoned me onto the beach to watch a sunset. And I had watched the sunset with pleasure. When I turned around to come back in I found that the tide had come in over my head. That’s when I decided to write.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Paris Review Interview (1990)

Pleasure, Books, Reading

“You can play jacks, and girls do that with a soft ball and do tricks with it.”

Dutch Schultz (1902–1935) American mobster

From police transcripts of incoherent deathbed confession

Girl

“I tossed my shoulders and swaggered away, whistling with pleasure. In the gutter I saw a long cigaret butt. I picked it up without shame, lit it as I stood with one foot in the gutter, puffed it and exhaled toward the stars. I was an American, and goddamn proud of it. This great city, these mighty pavements and proud buildings, they were the voice of my America. From sand and cactus we Americans had carved an empire. Camilla's people had had their chance. They had failed. We Americans had turned the trick. Thank God for my country. Thank God I had been born an American!”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust (1939), Chapter Five

God, People, Pleasure, Star

“Vorpal had the trick of adding a Malay enclitic to his utterances. This also had power to irritate, especially in the mornings. It irritated Nabby Adams that this should irritate him, but somewhere at the back of his brain was the contempt of the man learned in languages for the silly show-off, jingling the small change of ‘wallah’ and charpoy…”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Time for a Tiger (1956)

Learning, Change

“Between 1999 and 2004 there was no investment in Australia, it all went into housing and consumption all borrowed on the current account. When Peter Costello runs around saying, 'Oh we've paid off the debt,' it's like the pea and thimble trick. The Government debt or the massive private debt abroad? It's continuing to grow.”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

7:30 Report interview, May 8, 2006

Housing

“The tools threatening President Trump with impeachment have one bag of tricks stuffed with power tools: they audit, indict, arrest, bomb, change regimes. They don't make profitable business deals; they tax them. They don't make peace; they wage war.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Trump Fends Off 'Showboat' Comey And The Federal Zombies," http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/06/trump_fends_off_showboat_comey_and_the_federal_zombies.html The American Thinker, June 9, 2017. 2010s, 2017

War, Peace, Business, Change

“God has matured. He is not the impulsive, bowelless being of the Testaments - the vehement glorymonger, with His bag of cheap carny tricks and his booming voice - the fiery huckster with his burning bushes and his wonder wands. Nowadays God knows what He wants and He knows who He wants.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Euchrid Eucrow in Cave's novel And the Ass Saw the Angel (1988)
God and religion

God

“There probably is no more important quest in all science than the attempt to understand those very particular events in evolution by which brains worked out that special trick that has enabled them to add to the cosmic scheme of things: color, sound, pain, pleasure, and all the other facets of mental experience.”

Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913–1994) American neuroscientist

"Evolution of the Human Brain" (1964), p. 3

Pain, Pleasure, Color, Understanding

“It didn't matter that the story had begun, because kathakali discovered long ago that the secrets of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones that you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don't deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don't surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover's skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don't. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won't. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet you want to know again.
That is their mystery and their magic.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

page 229.
The God of Small Things (1997)
Variant: It didn't matter that the story had begun, because kathakali discovered long ago that the secrets of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones that you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don't deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don't surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover's skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don't. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won't. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet you want to know again.
That is their mystery and their magic.

Love, Secret, Way, Lovers

“Perhaps the heart does not deceive; never does give a false answer, except to those double-minded unhappy ones who do care about themselves, and so play tricks with it and tamper with it.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Heart, Falseness

“My work will use everything that it can to communicate. It will use any trick; it'll do anything — absolutely anything — to communicate and to win the viewer over. Even the most unsophisticated people are not threatened by it; they aren't threatened that this is something they have no understanding of. They can look at it and they can participate with it. And also somebody who has been very highly educated in art and deals with more esoteric areas can also view it and find that the work is open as far as being something that wants to add more to our culture. The work wants to meet the needs of' the people. It tries to bring down all the barriers that block people From their culture. that shield and hide them. It tells them to embrace the moment instead of always feeling that they're being indulged by things that they do not participate in. It tells them to believe in something and to eject their will. The idea of St. John and baptism right now is that there are greater things to come. And it's about embracing guilt and shame and moving forward instead of letting this negative society always thwart us — always a more negative society, always more negative.”

Jeff Koons (1955) American artist

Partly cited in: Linda Weintraub, Arthur Coleman Danto, Thomas McEvilley. Art on the edge and over: searching for art's meaning in contemporary society, 1970s-1990s. Art Insights, Inc., 1996. p. 201; And cited in Kristine Stiles, ‎Peter Howard Selz (1996). Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings. p. 381
"From Full Phantom Five," 1988

People, Education, Art, Feeling

“Interviewer: You describe seemingly fantastic events in such minute detail that it gives them their own reality. Is this something you have picked up from journalism?
García Márquez: That's a journalistic trick which you can also apply to literature. If you say that there are elephants flying in the sky, people are not going to believe you. But if you say that there are four hundred and twenty-five elephants in the sky, people will probably believe you.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Source: The Paris Review interview (1981), p. 324

People, Literature, Reality, Flying

“The trick is to make fear your friend. Fear forces you to prepare more rigorously and see potential problems more quickly.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

Website

Fear, Problem

“You basically have to trick yourself into incredible intensity to do this stuff, and I do a good job of pretending that I’m racing to save my mom from getting killed or my sister from being raped—some horrible thing that causes me to dig deep, like old-school ‘Braveheart’ s---. If you come into battle with that in your head, you’re gonna be a different person than if you think you’re just going out for a little swordfight. But when you do that for 10 years straight, it wears your a-- out. It’s like crying wolf to yourself a million times. And at some point, you start to say, ‘Why am I doing this?”

Bode Miller (1977) American alpine ski racer

Interview with Newsweek, Nov. 2005, pub. 23 Feb. 2006 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11522274/

School, Moms, Thinking, Sister

“The trick is to be Zen about it. Winning is sometimes not the prize”

Jane Fonda (1937) American actress and activist

On Twitter before the 2009 Tony Awards, as quoted by Canada East/Associated Press. Notable quotes from 2009 Tony Awards. 8 June 2009. http://www.canadaeast.com/entertainment/article/692573

“Nick Machiavel had ne'er a trick,
Though he gave his name to our Old Nick.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Canto I, line 1313
Source: Hudibras, Part III (1678)

“There is nothing, nothing on Urras that we Anarresti need! We left with empty hands, a hundred and seventy years ago, and we were right. We took nothing. Because there is nothing here but States and their weapons, the rich and their lies, and the poor and their misery. There is no way to act rightly, with a clear heart, on Urras. There is nothing you can do that profit does not enter into, and fear of loss, and the wish for power. You cannot say good morning without knowing which of you is ‘superior’ to the other, or trying to prove it. You cannot act like a brother to other people, you must manipulate them, or command them, or obey them, or trick them. You cannot touch another person, yet they will not leave you alone. There is no freedom. It is a box—Urras is a box, a package, with all the beautiful wrapping of blue sky and meadows and forests and great cities. And you open the box, and what is inside it? A black cellar full of dust, and a dead man. A man whose hand was shot off because he held it out to others. I have been in Hell at last. Desar was right; it is Urras; Hell is Urras.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 11 (pp. 346-347)

People, Fear, Beauty, Way

“Nonsense, it was all nonsense: this whole damned outfit, with its committees, its conferences, its eternal talk, talk, talk, was a great con trick; it was a mechanism to earn a few hundred men and women incredible sums of money.”

Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer

The Summer Before the Dark (1973)

Women, Men, Money

“Instead of funding issues of paper on the hypothecation of specific redeeming taxes (the only method of anticipating, in a time of war, the resources of times of peace, tested by the experience of nations), we are trusting to tricks of jugglers on the cards, to the illusions of banking schemes for the resources of the war, and for the cure of colic to inflations of more wind.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to José Correia da Serra (1814) ME 14:224
Posthumous publications, On financial matters

War, Peace, Time

“Most people think themselves kind enough, but rather like a magician thinking he is fooling an audience who can see through his trick, we are the worst judges of the effect we have on others. True, we can mentally point out various kindnesses we have committed and those pleasant aspects of ourselves. Yet by doing so, we ignore the real test cases: how we behave under pressure, how nice we are to people we don’t like, how we deal with other people who seem determined to not live up to our unrealistic expectations.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, There’s Probably No God - The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas (2009)

People, Fools, Thinking

“It was one of the oldest tricks of mob-management: give them a hate figure.”

Alastair Reynolds book Redemption Ark

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 4 (p. 66)

Hate

“Let us assume that we invited an unknown person to a game of cards. If this person answered us, “I don’t play,” we would either interpret this to mean that he did not understand the game, or that he had an aversion to it which arose from economic, ethical, or other reasons. Let us imagine, however, that an honorable man, who was known to possess every possible skill in the game, and who was well versed in its rules and its forbidden tricks, but who could like a game and participate in it only when it was an innocent pastime, were invited into a company of clever swindlers, who were known as good players and to whom he was equal on both scores, to join them in a game. If he said, “I do not play,” we would have to join him in looking the people with whom he was talking straight in the face, and would be able to supplement his words as follows: “I don’t play, that is, with people such as you, who break the rules of the game, and rob it of its pleasure. If you offer to play a game, our mutual agreement, then, is that we recognize the capriciousness of chance as our master; and you call the science of your nimble fingers chance, and I must accept it as such, it I will, or run the risk of insulting you or choose the shame of imitating you.” … The opinion of Socrates can be summarized in these blunt words, when he said to the Sophists, the leaned men of his time, “I know nothing.””

Johann Georg Hamann (1730–1788) German philosopher

Therefore these words were a thorn in their eyes and a scourge on their backs.
Socratic Memorabilia, J. Flaherty, trans. (Baltimore: 1967), pp. 165-167.

Men, People, Pleasure, Imagination

“You've got to stay sharp, on your toes, alert. Always look over your shoulder. Always protect yourself. Don't let your guard down for even a second. There are people who will take advantage of you the moment they see you're not in control. The world's filled with people like that. Nearly everyone you meet is like that. We're animals in a jungle, and we've got to be prepared to fight if we want to survive. You can't trust hardly anyone, hardly anyone at all. Even people who are supposed to like you can turn on you faster than you think. Even friends. People who say they love you are the worst, the most dangerous, the most untrustworthy of all. People who say they love you will pounce when they get the chance. You gotta always remember that they're just waiting for the opportunity to get you. Love's a trick. A cover. A way to catch you off guard. Never let down your guard. Never.”

Dean Koontz book The Voice of the Night

Roy Borden, p. 53
The Voice of the Night (1980)

Love, People, World, Way

“.. and since we are now living in the Summer-time, I don't have a trick to imagine me Winter so strongly that I would be able to paint one [a winter-landscape].... and you must have patience until next winter.”

Andreas Schelfhout (1787–1870) Dutch painter, etcher and lithographer

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek (original Dutch, citaat van Schelfhout, uit zijn brief:) ..en daar wij nu in het Zomer leeven zijn heb ik geen truk [truc] van mij de Winter zoo danig voor den geest te halen dat ik in staat zoude zijn er een te kunnen schilderen.. ..en gij zou den gedult moeten nemen tot aanstaande winter. Quote of Schelfhout in a letter to his client nl:Johannes Immerzeel, June 1832; as cited in 'Andreas Schelfhout Onsterfelijk schoon', Simonis & Buunk 2005 https://www.simonis-buunk.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/catalogus_schelfhout.pdf, p. 17

Imagination, Winter, Time, Summer