Con Artist Quotes

I've been a con artist since I was 16 and trying to get my dad to buy me a car. I never succeeded, but I learnt a lot of tactics. ~ Matt Bomer

The risks in antiques fraud are relative. Other criminals risk the absolute. You've never heard of a fraudster involved in a shoot-out, of the "Come and get me, copper!" sort. Or of some con artist needing helicopter gunships to bring him. No, we subtle-mongers do it with the smile, the promise, the hint. And we have one great ally: greed. And make no mistake. Greed is everywhere, like weather. ~ Jonathan Gash

No artist knows everything (yea, even this artist - piss-artist, con-artist, body-artist) but since every artist knows more than he can tell, all art is lying by omission. ~ Glen Duncan

During most of my Bureau career I worked major economic fraud investigations and was amazed at the schemes con-artist and corrupt corporate and public officials would devise to steal other people's money. I've also had the opportunity to work bank robberies and drug investigations. The one thing I know for sure is… With a gun you can steal hundreds. With a pen you can steal millions. ~ Jerri Williams

The irony of it, is how Freemasons have been trying to create and fulfill prophecy, and in their endeavor to hide behind secrecy they have been the catalyst for prophetic fulfillments. Moreover, I have taken the worst excrement ever defecated by mankind and have turned it into knowledge. Therefore, I have made the Thought a Thing and have aided the march of a TRUTH which I have bequeathed to mankind as a personal estate to hold in trust and I have dropped it into the world's wide treasury as an example of a human excellence of growth that shall make the spiritual glory of the human race greater because this endowment has been cultivated from Truth as raw as a diamond in the rough. For what man develops and creates will always be artificial and glorified fabrication that when dismantled, is nothing more than just a lie regardless of how sophisticated the deception. A con artist will never be more than just a thief, and a cubic zirconia will never be more perfect than a diamond. Thus I have written in the same line as Moses and he who died upon the cross, and I have achieved an intellectual sympathy with the Deity himself and since[according to Albert Pike] the best gift we can bestow on humanity, is manhood, then I shall call it:
ANTI - CHRIST ENDOWMENTS
Because I'm the Little Horn with the biggest horn on the field. They were not kidding when they said I would be more stout than my fellows. ~ Alejandro C. Estrada

I hope this book will inspire the kitchen con-artist in you, increase fruit and veggie consumption in your family, and motivate you to become an Accidental Cook. Pass it on! ~ Merrin McGregor

From now on, consider yourself a con artist. ~ Carsten Jensen

Who is going to believe a con artist? Everyone, if she is good. ~ Andy Griffith

Con? My mother was a con artist married to a copper?" - Mori
"Emily Ferris wasn't just a con artist. She was a master thief." - Alice ~ Heather W. Petty

You called me a natural con artist and asked me what other secrets I was hiding. I didn't answer because I already knew, in some deep, primal way, what furtive truth you were referring to: That I was destined to fall in love with you. ~ Megan McCafferty

The real con artist is Senator Marco Rubio.Who was elected in Florida and who has the worst voting record in the United States Senate. He doesn't go to vote. He's absent. ~ Donald Trump

The perfect Librarian is calm, cool, collected, intelligent, multilingual, a crack shot, a martial artist, an Olympic-level runner (at both the sprint and marathon), a good swimmer, an expert thief, and a genius con artist. They can steal a dozen books from a top-security strongbox in the morning, discuss literature all afternoon, have dinner with the cream of society in the evening, and then stay up until midnight dancing, before stealing some more interesting tomes at three a.m. That's what a perfect Librarian would do. In practice, most Librarians would rather spend their time reading a good book. ~ Genevieve Cogman

All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it. ~ H.L. Mencken

Donald Trump is not going to be the nominee, because we are not going to allow - people will wake up and we're not going to allow a con artist to take over the party of [Abraham] Lincoln and [Ronald] Reagan. ~ Marco Rubio

And if you were a very sophisticated con artist, what would you do to convince people that you were from the future? What benefits would that give you? For us, it's also a question of, "Is she or isn't she?" That's really a major part of the movie. ~ Zal Batmanglij

In order to be wildly popular you had to make people believe that you were fun and interesting I just wasn't that much of a con artist. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Like a stage magician, the con artist misdirects suspicion. While everyone's watching for him to pull a rabbit out of a hat, he's actually sawing a girl in half. You think he's doing one trick when he's actually doing another.
You think that I'm dying, but I'm laughing at you. ~ Holly Black

Don't wait for the coffee or the eggs or the shmuck in the front row to tell you how it is. You'll wait your whole life and then end up in an embankment with a heart full of sorrow and I could have done it betters.

The way I see it, time is a con artist. The con artist telling you that this isn't a good time, you should wait. The right time will never exist. Like so many of the things we think are perfect and in the end turn out to be just ordinary. ~ Jennifer Pastiloff

Florida is not going to vote for a con artist like Donald Trump. ~ Marco Rubio

I'm a con artist in that I'm an actor. I make people believe something is real when they know perfectly well it isn't. ~ John Lithgow

Don King was good to me through my years as champion, but I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him. He's a wheeler dealer and you've got to be careful. He's a great con artist. ~ Larry Holmes

Of course, there can be clear indications that a teacher is not worth paying attention to. A history as a fabulist or a con artist should be considered fatal; thus, the spiritual opinions of Joseph Smith, Gurdjieff, and L. Ron Hubbard can be safely ignored. A fetish for numbers is also an ominous sign. Math is magical, but math approached like magic is just superstition - and numerology is where the intellect goes to die. Prophecy is also a very strong indication of chicanery or madness on the part of a teacher, and of stupidity among his students. One can extrapolate from scientific data or technological trends (climate models, Moore's law), but most detailed predictions about the future lead to embarrassment right on schedule. ~ Sam Harris

Scratch a professor and you find a paranoiac, Barlow thought. But scratch a dean and you find a con artist. ~ Paul La Farge

sighed. "Bring her around sometime." She padded lithely over to me and took my wrist and looked at my watch. Her breathing had slowed. Her leotard was sweat-dark and fitted her almost as closely as her healthy hide. She beamed down at me. "I knew you'd be nice about it, Trav. She'll be here in twenty minutes." I stared up at her. "You are a con artist, McCall. ~ John D. MacDonald

You're a con artist. A liar. A thief. An unredeemable soul. You can't be reformed. You can't be saved. You'll die trying to make the world pay for what it did to you. And you'll die alone. ~ Karina Halle

Not even the most powerful organs of the press, including Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times, can discover a new artist or certify his work and make it stick. They can only bring you the scores. ~ Thomas Wolfe

Talk about a struggling artist having to work against enormous odds ... But I love movies so much, so I'm going to do it. ~ Ariel Pink

I could never even entertain the notion that it's an option, to not be an artist. ~ Dustin Yellin

I've always wanted to learn how to hook rugs. A wonderful artist named Leslie Giuliani taught me how. The nice thing is you can change it as you go along. ~ Roz Chast

What drives me is to still feel creative and like I'm pushing myself as an artist. ~ JC Chasez

The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it. ~ Henry David Thoreau

I'd never met a woman I considered as intelligent as me. That sounds bigheaded, but every woman I met was either a dolly-chick, or a sort of screwed-up intellectual chick. And of course, in the field I was in, I didn't meet many intellectual people anyway. I always had this dream of meeting an artist, an artist girl who would be like me. And I thought it was a myth, but then I met Yoko and that was it. ~ John Lennon

Literature has always been related to utopia, so when the utopia loses meaning, so does literature. What I was trying to do, and perhaps what all writers try to do-- what on earth do I know?-- was to combat fiction with fiction. What I ought to do was affirm what existed, affirm the state of things as they are, in other words, revel in the world outside instead of searching for a way out, for in that way I could undoubtedly have a better life, but I couldn't do it, I couldn't, something had congealed inside me, a conviction was rooted inside me, and although it was essentialist, that is, outmoded and, furthermore, romantic, I could not get past it, for the simple reason that it had not only been thought but also experienced, in these sudden states of clear-sightedness that everyone must know, where for a few seconds you catch sight of another world from the one you were in only a moment earlier, where the world seems to step forward and show itself for a brief glimpse before reverting and leaving everything as before... ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

The fact that people are embracing me so well as a new artist and being taken so seriously is something I'm really surprised by. ~ Alessia Cara

Mitchell Maxwell's Maxims
•You have to create your own professional path. There's no longer a roadmap for an artistic career.
•Follow your heart and the money will follow.
•Create a benchmark of your own progress. If you never look down while you're climbing the ladder you won't know how far you've come.
•Don't define success by net worth, define it by character. Success, as it's measured by society, is a fleeting condition.
•Affirm your value. Tell the world "I am an artist," not "I want to be an artist."
•You must actively live your dream. Wishing and hoping for someday doesn't make it happen. Get out there and get involved.
•When you look into the abyss you find your character.
•Young people too often let the fear of failure keep them from trying. You have to get bloody, sweaty and rejected in order to succeed.
•Get your face out of Facebook and into somebody's face. Close your e-mail and pick up the phone. Personal contact still speaks loudest.
•No one is entitled to act entitled. Be willing to work hard.
•If you're going to buck the norm you're going to have to embrace the challenges.
•You have to love the journey if you're going to work in the arts.
•Only listen to people who agree with your vision.
•A little anxiety is good but don't let it become fear, fear makes you inert.
•Find your own unique voice. Leave your individual imprint on the world, not a copy of someone else.
•Draw strength ~ Mitchell Maxwell

-Question: "On a scale from one to ten how fierce are you?"- David: "You are just asking me this because I am gay ... What the fuck does that mean?" -David Levithan, at Teen Lit Con- ~ David Levithan

Where there is a true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity. ~ Orhan Pamuk

Eminem has talent, and his talent is the thing that influences many young people who would have never gone anywhere near rap. White kids in different parts of the world use him as a barometer and the standard to live up to. In some ways, Eminem is an artist who has ushered in a new movement. ~ Chuck D

If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you've done and whoever you were and throw them away. The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, "Bye. I have to go. I'm going crazy and I'm getting out of here." And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently. (Steve Jobs) ~ Walter Isaacson

Im interested in the liberating aspect of being totally untethered, let loose in the worst possible environments. My favorite artists are always women that do things that are so wrong ... I like things to be seven kinds of wrong. If they are seven kinds of wrong, sometimes the wrongs neutralize themselves, and the whole thing becomes ... ~ Ashley Bickerton

Satisfaction of one's curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life.
Linus Pauling ~ Linus Pauling

The Best of the artist's art, which will one day be in a Museum wall, the Painting that sets the artist apart of all other artist artists. ~ Kelly Miller

The artist creates something out of nothing! Without the thoughts and feelings of the artist, there would be no art. It's their particular creative mind in contemplation that links to intention to give birth to what we call an artistic creation. This is how the power of intention worked in creating you, someone new, entirely unique, someone out of nothing. Reproducing this in yourself means encountering the creative impulse and knowing that the power of intention is reaching for the realization of all that it feels, and that it is expressing itself as you. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

When we are touched by a song, it is because the artist cannot hide himself. ~ Leonard Cohen

It had no affect on me whatsoever. Um ... I consider Jay a very good friend of mine. I also consider Dame and Biggs very good friends of mine. With me not being a Roc-A-Fella artist, with me just being a friend of both and not being tied to them in the Roc-A-Fella situation, I was still able to maintain personal relationships with both of em. ~ Bun B.

Failure is the most important part of an artist's training, and one you cannot afford to do without. ~ Gustav Holst

I like to be in the zone. I like being in the studio with the artists, with the producers, with the musicians, feeling it, and going there. I feel like I have a lot of content to start writing about. ~ LeCrae

I have great admiration and respect for the editors, writers, and artists of the comic books. They're turning out, I don't know, maybe 100 Batman stories a year, and the character turns 70 years old in May. It's incredible: for 70 years, on a weekly basis, every Wednesday, there is some Batman story coming out, if not a bunch of Batman stories coming out. ~ Michael Uslan

I left Jamaica for a while, because as an artist I need to experience different things, see the world, have different energies. Living in one place is not good for me. ~ Ziggy Marley

That's because only a real artist knows the actual anatomy of the terrible or the physiology of fear - the exact sort of lines and proportions that connect up with latent instincts or hereditary memories of fright, and the proper colour contrasts and lighting effects to stir the dormant sense of strangeness. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

That day I behaved like a good artist, one whose job is to build rather than break. ~ Anuradha Bhattacharyya

A picture of human life such as a great artist can give, surprises even the trivial and the selfish into that attention to what is apart from themselves, which may be called the raw material of moral sentiment. ~ George Eliot

If a carpenter makes a chair that's comfortable for the person who's going to sit in it, he's done his job. If a train engineer gets a train in on time, he's going to make someone happy who's waiting at the station. And if an artist draws the kind of a picture that people are going to enjoy looking at, or he makes a visual story which people are going to enjoy reading, he's done his job. ~ Jack Kirby

Rose was patently a degenerate. Nature, in scheduling his characteristics, had pruned all superlatives. The rude armour of the flesh, under which the spiritual, like a hide-bound chrysalis, should develop secret and self-contained, was perished in his case, as it were, to a semi-opaque suit, through which his soul gazed dimly and fearfully on its monstrous arbitrary surroundings. Not the mantle of the poet, philosopher, or artist fallen upon such, can still its shiverings, or give the comfort that Nature denies.

Yet he was a little bit of each - poet, philosopher, and artist; a nerveless and self-deprecatory stalker of ideals, in the pursuit of which he would wear patent leather shoes and all the apologetic graces. The grandson of a 'three-bottle' J.P., who had upheld the dignity of the State constitution while abusing his own in the best spirit of squirearchy; the son of a petulant dyspeptic, who alternated seizures of long moroseness with fits of abject moral helplessnes, Amos found his inheritance in the reversion of a dissipated constitution, and an imagination as sensitive as an exposed nerve. Before he was thirty he was a neurasthenic so practised, as to have learned a sense of luxury in the very consciousness of his own suffering. It was a negative evolution from the instinct of self-protection - self-protection, as designed in this case, against the attacks of the unspeakable.

("The Accursed Cordonnier") ~ Bernard Capes

Music is the most absorbing of all the arts. It absorbs the mind of the artist, whether creator or executant, to the exclusion of every other consideration outside his own immediate necessities or desires. ~ Baroness Orczy

Artists are part of the information process ... Visual history is important in providing a record of what is going on - levels of intention, levels of confidence, levels of aggression or control. ~ Leon Golub

From the age of six I wanted to be an artist. At that point I meant a painter, but it turned out what I really meant was I was someone who was very interested in watching the world and making copies of it. ~ Reynolds Price

I want to keep working. I want to step away from young adult fiction. I want to do theater periodically - Farragut North reminded me how great it is. I started out in theater. I trained in theater and then I kind of fell into film and TV. I want to work with interesting artists, talented actors, talented directors, and talented scripts. Not necessarily leading roles. ~ Max Irons

If there is anything the artist or a true work of art teaches us, it is that variety and complexity really increase the unity, and that to achieve unity within a great variety of complexity is a greater achievement and more satisfying piece of art than to achieve unity with just a few elements, which is relatively easily achieved. ~ David Steindl-Rast

Now one thing I think is really lame, is if you're an artist and you go to a karaoke bar and sing your own song. I like to get up there and sing stuff that I would never sing on stage anywhere else. Like Neil Diamond. ~ Jason Aldean