Fooling Quotes

I can be a woodsman if need be. I grew up very close to some forest, and I spent a lot of my formative years up and down trees, fooling around in the woods. I'm no stranger to that sort of landscape. ~ Alex Turner

Hey," she whispered to Malachi. "When are Irin considered adults?"

He was following what looked to be a quiet argument between Sari and Mala. "Full adults? Around sixty to seventy-five years. When we're finished with our training. Why?"

She flushed. Wow.

"So, you're quite the cradle robber, aren't you?"

Malachi turned to her abruptly. "What? No, I'm not."

"I'm not even thirty. That's like... a teenager to you guys."

She could see the flush crawl up his neck, even behind the beard. "You're human. You mature differently."

"But I'm not really human."

His shoulders were stiff and his posture screamed his discomfort. It was really a shame Ava found teasing him to be so amusing.

"I mean, what would your mom say if she found out you were mated-and I mean well and thoroughly mated- to what she would basically consider a kid?"

He wiped a hand over his forehead. "Heaven above, please stop talking."

"So are we going to stop fooling around now?"

He groaned. "Ava."

"I'm just yanking your chain."

"You're going to have to speak up, because the mental lecture my mother's memory is giving me right now is rather loud. ~ Elizabeth Hunter

I think people involved in politics make good actors. Acting and politics both involve fooling people. People like being fooled by actors. When you get right down to it, they probably like being fooled by politicians even more. A skillful actor will make you think, but a skillful politician will make you never have to think. ~ Donna Brazile

I had tremendous fun fooling around with the way people talked about songs, just the way that became another way of understanding the world. ~ Greil Marcus

There are new gods growing in America, clinging to growing knots of belief: gods of credit card and freeway, of Internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and of neon. Proud gods, fat and foolish creatures, puffed up with their own newness and importance. "They are aware of us, they fear us, and they hate us," said Odin. "You are fooling yourselves if you believe otherwise. ~ Neil Gaiman

Since you came back from summer break, our entire relationship is about fooling around. We never talk anymore, and I'm sick of feeling guilty for not ripping my clothes off and spreading my legs to prove I love you. ~ Simone Elkeles

He stopped at an intersection, panting, rubbing at the twinge in his hamstrings, looking around, though he knew no cars were coming in either direction.
Dropping forward at the waist Martin admitted that he was fucking himself up. Dr Leonowsky told him: hurting yourself is an articulation of self-disgust. It helps no one, prevents nothing. This wasn't a glorious loss of control, he was fooling himself, it was self-harm. ~ Denise Mina

The tiny match we've been fooling with just set off an explosion. ~ Veronica Larsen

One thing is sure: if we don't teach our young people how to deal with sex when they are half out of their minds, we are not only fooling them; we're fooling ourselves as well. Whatever lessons we teach them, we need to help them understand that they will react differently when they are calm and cool from when their hormones are raging at fever pitch (and of course the same also applies to our own behavior). ~ Dan Ariely

I was fooling everyone by surrounding myself with funny people. But then I put myself out there - writing my own sketches, going on stage with nobody surrounding me - and for some reason people were still laughing. ~ Carly Craig

Wrath…"
"What," he murmured against her, working her with his nose. "You don't like?"
"Shut up and get back to doing - "
His tongue slipping under the panties cut her off…and made him have to slow himself down.
She was so slick and wet and soft and willing, it was all he could do to keep himself from hauling her on the rug and going at her deep and hard. And then they'd both miss out on the fun of anticipation.
Moving the cotton aside with his hand, he kissed her pink flesh, then delved in. She was oh, so ready for him, and he knew it because of the honey that he swallowed as he dragged upward in a long, slow lick.
But it wasn't enough, and holding the panties to the side was distracting. With his fang, he punctured them, then split them apart right up the middle, leaving the two halves to hang off her hips. His palms went up to her ass and squeezed hard as he quit fooling around and got busy working out his female with his mouth. He knew exactly what she liked best, the sucking and the licking and the going in with his tongue.
Closing his eyes, he took it all in, the scent and the taste and the feel of her shuddering against him as she peaked and came apart.
Behind the fly of his leathers, his cock was screaming for attention, the rasp of the buttons not nearly sufficient to satisfy what it was demanding, but tough shit.
His erection was going to have to chill for a while, because this was too sweet to stop anytime soon. < ~ J.R. Ward

For will anyone dare to tell me that business is more entertaining than fooling among boats? He must have never seen a boat, or never seen an office, who says so. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I took a little walk outside for a while. I was surprised that I wasn't feeling what I thought people were supposed to feel under the circumstances. May be I was fooling myself. I wasn't delighted, but I didn't feel terribly upset, perhaps because we had known for a long time that it was going to happen.

It's hard to explain. If a Martian(who, we'll imagine never dies except by accident) came to Earth and saw this peculiar race of creatures-these humans who live about seventy or eighty years, knowing that death is going to come--it would look to hi like a terrible problem of psychology to live under those circumstances, knowing that life is only temporary Well, we humans somehow figure out how to live despite this problem: we laugh, we joke, we live.

The only difference for me and Arlene was, instead of fifty years, it was five years. It was only a quantitative difference--the psychological problem was just the same. The only way it would have become any different is if we had said to ourselves, "But those other people have it better, because they might live fifty years." But that's crazy. Why make yourself miserable saying things like, "Why do we have such bad luck? What has God done to us? What have we done to deserve this?"--all of which, if you understand reality and take it completely into your heart, are irrelevant and unsolvable. They are just things that nobody can know. Your situation is just an accident of life..

We had a hell of goo ~ Richard P. Feynman

Taking the easy way isn't right. You need to do things properly in life to achieve the best results. People who cut corners are only fooling themselves. ~ Sinead Moriarty

There is value in long years of obscurity, if one doesn't go insane or suicidal, in that, simply because nobody is looking, the habit of fooling around and trying things out gets ingrained. ~ Jules Olitski

Always listen to the parent who doesn't like who you love. They can smell a mistake. Of course, you don't find this out until you realize that the person you fell in love with is different from the person you married. Some men are good at fooling you. ~ Terry McMillan

A few days later, I found myself back in the cellar. But this time, I was involved in an activity way more fun than cataloging magic junk.
"What happened to the promise of making out in castles?" I asked as Archer and I pulled back for a breather. I was leaning back against one of the shelves, my hands clutching Archer's waist. Over his shoulder, there was a jar of eyeballs staring at me, and I nodded toward it. "Because, see, things like that? Kind of a mood killer."
He glanced at the jar and then turned back to me, waggling his eyebrows. "Really? I find it has the opposite effect."
Giggling, I elbowed him in the stomach and pushed myself off the shelf. "You're sick."
He smiled and ducked his head to kiss me again, but I skirted around him. "Come on, Cross, we came down here for a reason, and it wasn't fooling around."
Smirking, Archer folded his arms over his chest. "May not have been your reason, but-"
I cut him off. "No. Don't distract me with your sexy talk. We need to search this place, and that spell Elodie did will only last so long." Elodie had swooped into my body at the cellar door, doing a quick spell to unlock it. She hadn't even looked at Archer, much less said anything. And the second the lock clicked open, she'd vanished.
The smirk disappeared from Archer's face, and he actually looked kind of sullen.
"Are you honestly that bummed about not hooking up right now?" I teased.
But he was deadly serious when he shook his ~ Rachel Hawkins

Fooling around with alternating currents is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever. It's too dangerous ... it could kill a man as quick as a bolt of lightning. Direct current is safe. ~ Thomas A. Edison

There are lots of really good guitarists, but they play with the same pedals that everybody else does. Everybody buys the same pedals, so the sounds tend to be the same. I am looking for different ways of doing that without having to spend days and weeks and months fooling around with pedals, which I don't enjoy. ~ Paul Simon

She is the ocean, gentle, smooth and calm on the surface…
I am the fooling diver, braving her deep, dark, dangerous depth… ~ Dinesh Kumar Biran

Once I was no longer fussing with my coat, he said, "You may be fooling the neighbors and the guards and Jesus and your gaga mother with these goody-goody visits of yours, but you're not fooling me. Keep it up if you want a gold star. But don't be dragging your ass back here on my account." Then he added, "Because I hate you." I ~ Lionel Shriver

Where do ideas come from? From looking at one thing, and seeing another. From fooling around, from playing with possibilities, from speculating, from changing, pushing, pulling, transforming, and if you're lucky, you come up with something worth saving, using, and building on. That's where the game stops and the work begins."
~ Short Film: Why Man Creates ~ Saul Bass

Humankind is still fooling around with hypocrisy, I thought. They don't realize that it's too late even for that. ~ Saul Bellow

When we think we have something to say we are usually wrong. We are fooling ourselves. Trip into discovery. Don't write what you know, discover something new. ~ Marie Howe

Lie to yourself if you want, but you're not fooling me. Your excuses tell me that you didn't really
want it. ~ Steve Maraboli

Pitching was about fooling people, manipulating them, making them believe in something that ultimately wasn't there. Great pitching was great lying. ~ Linda Ellerbee

I enjoyed the side bars with fun facts and notable sources for where to get more help. Merrin's such a fun writer; I'd love to see her invite kids into her kitchen for cooking classes. She'd be perfect in the classroom and would entice children to try new foods. It's the adults that might need fooling. ~ Cindy Gay

First, let's pretend for a minute. Let's say that, as the imposter complex voice tells you, you really do have no idea what you're doing, you actually are fooling everyone, and it's true you are in fact a big, giant fraud. Okay, seriously think about what I just said. That would take an immense amount of work. That's pulling off a major heist, like stealing the Queen of England's entire hat collection or something. ~ Andrea Owen

As we begin to leave Afghanistan, are we fooling ourselves about what we are leaving behind or what we have promised the people of Afghanistan? Especially the women and girls? ~ Greta Van Susteren

Your job as a scientist is to figure out how you're fooling yourself. ~ Saul Perlmutter

The True Believer ignores anything that doesn't fit his belief system. Instead, he inevitably comes to hold those beliefs at a very profound level. They can become absolutely part of his identity. It is this that brings together the religious, the psychic, the cynic (as opposed to the open skeptic) and the narrow-minded of all kinds. It is something I encountered a lot among my fellow Christians. At one level it can be seen in the circular discussion which goes as follows:

Why do you believe in the bible?
Because it is Gods word.
And why do you believe in God?
Because of what it says in the bible.

At a less obvious level, it can be seen in the following common exchange:

Why do you believe Christianity is true?
Because I have the experience of a personal relationship with God.
So how do you know you're not fooling yourself?
Because i know it is real.

Even as an enthusiastic believer myself I could see this kind of tautology at work, and over time I realized that it is common to all forms of True Belief., regardless of the particular belief in question. The fact is, it's enormously difficult - and you need to be fantastically brave - to overcome the circularity of your own ideologies. But just because our identity might be tied up with what we believe, it doesn't make that belief any more correct. One wishes that True Believers of any sort would learn a little modesty in their convictions. ~ Derren Brown

I was the class clown so I was used to performing and fooling around in front of my friends. ~ Dominic Monaghan

If you want to kill me then go ahead, but remember the unspoken rule between us. You are mine, Liam. You belong to me. Your face, your body, your heart, your soul, you sold it to me and I sold mine to you. So if I die, you die. If you die, I die. As long as there is air in your lungs, there is air in mine. So don't pretend, Liam. You're not fooling anyone…not even yourself. So either let me go and kiss me, or kill us all and be done with it.""If you want to kill me then go ahead, but remember the unspoken rule between us. You are mine, Liam. You belong to me. Your face, your body, your heart, your soul, you sold it to me and I sold mine to you. So if I die, you die. If you die, I die. As long as there is air in your lungs, there is air in mine. So don't pretend, Liam. You're not fooling anyone…not even yourself. So either let me go and kiss me, or kill us all and be done with it. ~ J.J. McAvoy

We are all actors, set on the stage of the world, as the curtains open we put on our best performance to this audience of life. ~ Anthony Liccione

If you're not able to laugh inside a sex shop,
then you probably shouldn't be there.
I mean, they don't call it fooling around for nothing. ~ David Levithan

1. Write like you'll live forever - fear is a bad editor.
2. Write like you'll croak today - death is the best editor.
3. Fooling others is fun. Fooling yourself is a lethal mistake.
4. Pick one - fame or delight.
5. The archer knows the target. The poet knows the wastebasket.
6. Cunning and excess are your friends.
7. TV and liquor are your enemies.
8. Everything eternal happens in a spare room at 3 a.m.
9. You're done when the crows sing. ~ Ron Dakron

The most important part of seeing Darla every night wasn't the fooling around. It was the few minutes we talked while holding each other, the feeling of security I got with her, the feeling of being understood and loved. Before the eruption, I wouldn't have believed that I could cuddle up every night with the girl who starred in my dreams and not be totally preoccupied with sex. But the trek across Iowa had changed something. I wanted, needed to see her so badly that it woke me up at night. But making out was incidental to my need – nice when it happened, but secondary to the simple pleasure of sleeping beside her. ~ Mike Mullin

Getting sentimental," you say, but who are you fooling, you've always been. ~ Stewart O'Nan

I don't know…I would like to believe that the purpose of life is to be good…but I can't. I feel like I would be fooling myself. I really wish I could; I think life would be much easier if I had a positive outlook. But, on certain days, when I think about it, I feel like picking goodness as the purpose for my existence is completely subjective and has more to do with what I want than the actual 'reality' of life…. I don't want the purpose of my existence to be a personal invention. I need it to be 'real'…Am I making any sense? ~ Sheila Matharu

It takes all sorts of in and outdoor schooling To get adapted to my kind of fooling. ~ Robert Frost

A high school student shouldn't smoke cigarettes. You can't comfort someone with money either. And fooling around with someone's feelings ... Trying out someone when you're not even interested. That's something you deserve to get hit for. ~ Cheon Eunbi

You cold or something?' he said. She strained against him; she wanted to pass clear through him: 'It's a chill, it's nothing'; and then, pushing a little away: 'Say you love me.'

I said it.'

No, oh no. You haven't. I was listening. And you never do.'

Well, give me time.'

Please.'

He sat up and glanced at a clock across the room. It was after five. Then decisively he pulled off his windbreaker and began to unlace his shoes.

Aren't you going to, Clyde?'

He grinned back at her. 'Yeah, I'm going to.'

I don't mean that; and what's more, I don't like it: you sound as though you were talking to a whore.'

Come off it, honey. You didn't drag me up here to tell you about love.'

You disgust me,' she said.

Listen to her! She's sore!'

A silence followed that circulated like an aggrieved bird. Clyde said, 'You want to hit me, huh? I kind of like you when you're sore: that's the kind of girl you are,' which made Grady light in his arms when he lifted and kissed her. 'You still want me to say it?' Her head slumped on his shoulder. 'Because I will,' he said, fooling his fingers in her hair. 'Take off your clothes--and I'll tell it to you good. ~ Truman Capote

That top," he said when he dipped his face close, and I realized his voice sounded funny. It was intense but it was also hoarse like when we were fooling around and I understood why when he again spoke. "Tonight, when I fuck you, I want you naked. Later, I want you ridin' my cock wearin' nothin' but that fuckin' top. ~ Kristen Ashley

Do not try to change someone, when you do this you deny the Love inside you by choosing to deny what is Now. Love can only exist now, when you try to change someone into an idea of what you want them to be you have decided to be in a relationship with your projection of a possible potential of someone else. You are fooling yourself if you think trying to change someone will make you happy. Instead, change in yourself the things you think the other person should change. This is why you are not happy and fulfilled now. ~ Jackson Kiddard

Nah. But on the first day of class, when I saw that guy nailed to the plus sign, I knew these people weren't fooling around.' " Lank ~ Anne Lamott

When you allow yourself to express both your authentic creativity and leadership talents, you will move in authentic humility and open yourself to the freedom offered by The No-Plan Plan. You will know you have no need to control all the details or waste precious moments fooling yourself with unneeded plans. You'll find faith and trust yourself, the Spirit of your own understanding, and those you lead. ~ Kevin E. Houchin Esq.

Evil communication truly corrupts good manner.

Not every adult has good moral upbringing and as such they abuse ethics at will. To them, they are having fun when in truth they are fooling themselves. ~ OMOSOHWOFA CASEY

I didn't realize how much harm I was doing back then and I think a lot of rap artists probably don't realize it now. I said a lot of stuff fooling around back then, and I saw it do a lot of harm. ~ Adam Yauch

To Lovers out there …

Settling down is not retirement. Fooling around is not an achievement. You settle down, because you found the right partner. You fool around, because you are looking for a right partner. ~ De_philosopher_DJKyos

Our party has been accused of fooling the public by calling tax increases 'revenue enhancement'. Not so. No one was fooled ~ Dan Quayle

Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves. ~ Richard Feynman

I've been in love often enough to be completely exhausted by it, and not to know what it means any more. When you look back afterwards, you can always find another way of putting it. You say, "I was obsessed, it was really lust, I was fooling myself," because after you've recovered from being in love, you always decide that that wasn't what it was. ~ Louis De Bernieres

Anyone who thinks they're indispensible is fooling themselves. ~ Hugh Jackman

I was adept at fooling the deity. I prayed immediately after all crimes until eventually prayer and crime became indistinguishable to me. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

God, I loved him. I could insist I was okay with just being friends, that I'd find someone else and get over him, but I was fooling myself. There was no getting past this. I loved him, and fifty years from now we could be married to other people, never exchanged so much as a kiss, and I'd still looking into his eyes and know he was the one. He'd always be the one. ~ Kelley Armstrong

Don't you know? Adam wondered. He, at least, could still smell diesel fuel on his hands. Don't you know what I am?
But this flock of peacocks was too busy fooling to notice they were being fooled. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

The artist isn't particularly keen on getting a thing done, as you call it. He gets his pleasure out of doing it, playing with it, fooling with it, if you like. The mere completion of it is an incident. ~ William McFee

You can have the most wonderful motives for what you do, but if what you do harms other people, you're fooling yourself. ~ John Carroll Lynch

I think the easiest people to fool are ourselves. Fooling ourselves may even be a necessary precondition for fooling others. ~ Iain Banks

The lieutenant's fooling around again with the telegraph girl at the station," said the corporal, after he had gone. "He's been running after her for a fortnight and he's always frightfully furious when he comes from the telegraph office and he says about her: "She's a whore. She won't sleep with me! ~ Jaroslav Hasek

I used to get the feeling, and sometimes I still get it, that sometimes I was fooling somebody; I don't know who or what, maybe myself. ~ Marilyn Monroe

Criticizing people, winding them up, making idiots of them or fooling them doesn't make people with autism laugh. What makes us smile from the inside is seeing something beautiful, or a memory makes us laugh. This generally happens when there's nobody watching us. And at night, on our own, we might burst out laughing underneath the duvet, or roar with later in an empty room ... When we don't need to think about other people or anything else, that's when we wear our aural expressions. ~ Naoki Higashida

It didn't get sick. Someone" - Iran cleared her throat and went on huskily - "someone came here, got the goat out of its cage, and dragged it to the edge of the roof."

"And pushed it off?" he said.

"Yes." She nodded.

"Did you see who did it?"

"I saw her very clearly," Iran said. "Barbour was still up here fooling around; he came down to get me and we called the police, but by then the animal was dead and she had left. A small young-looking girl with dark hair and large black eyes, very thin. Wearing a long fish-scale coat. She had a mail-pouch purse. And she made no effort to keep us from seeing her. As if she didn't care."

"No, she didn't care," he said. "Rachael wouldn't give a damn if you saw her; she probably wanted you to, so I'd know who had done it." He kissed her. "You've been waiting up here all this time?"

"Only for half an hour. That's when it happened; half an hour ago." Iran, gently, kissed him back. "It's so awful. So needless."

He turned toward his parked car, opened the door, and got in behind the wheel. "Not needless," he said. "She had what seemed to her a reason." An android reason, he thought. ~ Philip K. Dick

I do think to some extent multitasking is a way of fooling ourselves that we're being exceptionally efficient. ~ James Surowiecki

Pipe-smokers spend so much time cleaning, filling and fooling with their pipes, they don't have time to get into mischief. ~ Bill Vaughan

Please tell me you are not fooling around with a Jinn King?" He telepathed,disbelieving Trey's utter stupidity.
His friend's smirk slipped but his eyes still glittered with humor.
"Fine I won't tell you. ~ Samantha Young

Jane," he rasped as his strokes grew frenzied. "It's always ... been you. Only you."
"Only you," she echoed.
She'd been fooling herself about Edwin. There had only ever been one man in her heart. And as he drove himself deep inside her, he sent her vaulting into the sun.
When he followed her into the bliss, she clutched him close to her chest and prayed that he would let her inside his heart as deeply as she'd let him into hers. That she wasn't making a mistake by taking up with him again.
Because it was too late to go back now. This time, he had her for better or worse. ~ Sabrina Jeffries

The Operative tried to implement the Purusey breathing technique, which has been proven effective at fooling polygraphs. There is no conclusive evidence as to
whether it is effective at masking the internal lie detectors of fifteen-year-old boys. ~ Ally Carter

Fooling laymen with science is sometimes so easy it should be criminal. ~ Mira Grant

You're not fooling anyone by taking your clothes off when you go to bed. ~ Richard Brautigan

You know, they are fooling us, there is no God. ~ Joseph Stalin

I was wise enough to never grow up while fooling most people into believing I had. ~ Margaret Mead

If I'm successful in fooling a wire service, I don't really have to do anything else to promote the story. ~ Joey Skaggs

The nice thing about poetry is that you're always stretching the definitions of words. Lawyers and scientists and scholars of one sort or another try to restrict the definitions, hoping that they can prevent people from fooling each other. But that doesn't stop people from lying.

Cezanne painted a red barn by painting it ten shades of color: purple to yellow. And he got a red barn. Similarly, a poet will describe things many different ways, circling around it, to get to the truth.

My father also had a nice little simile. He said, "The truth is a rabbit in a bramble patch. And you can't lay your hand on it. All you do is circle around and point, and say, 'It's in there somewhere. ~ Pete Seeger

You came along and changed everything. I don't want to be some guy you're fooling around with anymore, Rylann. I want to be with you all the way. ~ Julie James

A journalist who says, 'Well, I pissed off both sides--I must be doing something right,' is probably fooling himself and, worse, he may be fooling the reader. Balance should not be a smokescreen for laziness. ~ Joe Sacco

Without writers fooling themselves about what their books might accomplish there would be no books at all. ~ Mark Vonnegut

Don't you see, Rosalia? I wouldn't mind giving up Paris for you. That's why I can think about staying here or even asking you to come with me to Paris. I can't envision being without you. Before, you said I was being kind to you when I told you how it makes me sad when you're sad, and happy when you're happy. But I'm not being kind. I'm falling in love with you. Can't you see that? I'm crazy about you, and it's tearing me up on the inside. You're all I think about when I wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night. You're in my dreams. Even when I'm struggling over how to make a better pastry better, you pop up into my mind! I wonder what you would add to make it better. Then again, whom are we fooling? Your desserts are always better than mine!"
Rosalia lowered her eyes and said softly, "That's not true. You've won a few of the contests we've had. Madre Carmela wouldn't lie."
"She's getting old. Her palate is changing. I've heard the other workers who have tried your pastries express how good yours are and how they're often better than everyone else's."
Rosalia folded her hands in her lap. He is falling in love with me. He'd said it! Though she was frightened to hear this, she couldn't deny that she was also elated.
Antonio came back to the bed and sat down next to her. This time, he closed the space between them. He pushed her hair back behind her ear, and then took her face in both of his hands. She had no choice but to look at him.
"I love you ~ Rosanna Chiofalo

Willow turned her gaze from him as he sat down on the bed and smoothed her tangled hair off her face. "I'm sorry I wasn't here for you, sweetheart. Are you all right now?"
Willow couldn't help flinching from his touch. "Of course I'm all right," she snapped.
Rider jerked his hand back as if bitten. "Freckles, honey, is something wrong, something you're not telling me?"
The angry redhead shrugged. "What could possibly be wrong?"
"I don't know. You just seem a little....out of sorts."
Bastard, she silently cursed. But aloud she said, "I'm fine. Just tired, I guess."
"Do you want me to bring your supper to you in here? I'd be happy to keep you company."
"I would like to have my supper in here but don't bother yourself on my account. I'm sure you have things to discuss with Pa and the boys."
Rider stood abruptly, obviously at a loss over her attitude. "Fine,Willow, if that's what you want."
"It is."
He opened the door to leave but halted when she called, "Rider."
"Yes?"
"You better move your things in with one of the boys. Miriam is sharing my bed tonight."
"Tonight? But I'm leaving tomorrow and won't be back until-"
"Really,Rider, it's only for one night and I ain't,er, am not in any shape for fooling around!"
"I know that," he bit out, his ire piqued now. "I just thought it might be nice to hold you."
With that, he slammed out the door and Willow broke into tears. Before they stopped, her head was p ~ Charlotte McPherren

As long as he fought imaginary giants, Don Quixote was just play-acting. However once he actually kills someone, he will cling to his fantasies for all he is worth, because only they give meaning to his tragic misdeed. Paradoxically, the more sacrifices we make for an imaginary story, the more tenaciously we hold on to it, because we desperately want to give meaning to those sacrifices and to the suffering we have caused. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

There can be no fooling ourselves into thinking this is something other than what it is - the willful ejection of Molly from our nest. It's too late for second thoughts, anyway. She has to be moved into her dorm in time for freshman orientation. It's been marked on the kitchen calendar for weeks - the expiration date on her childhood. ~ Susan Wiggs

Do I have an original thought in my head? My bald head. Maybe if I were happier, my hair wouldn't be falling out.
Life is short. I need to make the most of it. Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I'm a walking cliché.
I really need to go to the doctor and have my leg checked. There's something wrong. A bump. The dentist called again. I'm way overdue. If I stop putting things off, I would be happier. All I do is sit on my fat ass. If my ass wasn't fat I would be happier. I wouldn't have to wear these shirts with the tails out all the time. Like that's fooling anyone. Fat ass.
I should start jogging again. Five miles a day. Really do it this time. Maybe rock climbing. I need to turn my life around. What do I need to do? I need to fall in love. I need to have a girlfriend. I need to read more, improve myself. What if I learned Russian or something? Or took up an instrument? I could speak Chinese. I'd be the screenwriter who speaks Chinese and plays the oboe. That would be cool.
I should get my hair cut short. Stop trying to fool myself and everyone else into thinking I have a full head of hair. How pathetic is that?
Just be real. Confident. Isn't that what women are attracted to? Men don't have to be attractive. But that's not true. Especially these days. Almost as much pressure on men as there is on women these days.
Why should I be made to feel I have to apologize for my existence? Maybe it's my brain chemistry. Maybe that's what's wron ~ Charlie Kaufman

If I had been a more realistic and reasonable person, if I had not been twenty-one and still fooling myself, I would have said, Wait. ~ Amy Bloom

It's not about fooling somebody, it's actually giving somebody a measure of their own belief: how much you want to be fooled. That's why we pay to go to magic shows and things like that. ~ Vik Muniz

Number two was Hugh, who had suggested to his father that he would like to go into the church. His father had said, "Only if it's the Church of Om, but none of the others. I'm not having no son of mine fooling around with cultic activities!" Om was handily silent, thereby enabling his priests to interpret his wishes how they chose. Amazingly, Om's wishes rarely translated into instructions like "Feed the poor" or "Help the elderly" but more along the lines of "You need a splendid residence" or "Why not have seven courses for dinner?" So Lord Swivel felt that a clergyman in the family could in fact be useful. ~ Terry Pratchett

I told them a thousand times if I told them once:
Stop fooling around, I said, with straw and sticks;
They won't hold up; you're taking an awful chance.
Brick is the stuff to build with, solid bricks.
You want to be impractical, go ahead.
But just remember, I told them; wait and see.
You're making a big mistake. Awright, I said,
But when the wolf comes, don't come running to me.
The funny thing is, they didn't. There they sat,
One in his crummy yellow shack, and one
Under his roof of twigs, and the wolf ate
Them, hair and hide. Well, what is done is done.
But I'd been willing to help them, all along,
If only they'd once admitted they were wrong. ~ Sarah Henderson Hay

Fonny had found something that he could do, that he wanted to do, and this saved him from the death that was waiting to overtake the children of our age. Though the death took many forms, though people died early in many different ways, the death itself was very simple and the cause was simple, too: as simple as a plague: the kids had been told that they weren't worth shit and everything they saw around them proved it. They struggled, they struggled, but they fell, like flies, and they congregated on the garbage heaps of their lives, like flies. And perhaps I clung to Fonny, perhaps Fonny saved me because he was just about the only boy I knew who wasn't fooling around with the needles or drinking cheap wine or mugging people or holding up stores - and he never got his hair conked: it just stayed nappy. He started working as a short-order cook in a barbecue joint, so he could eat, and he found a basement where he could work on his wood and he was at our house more often than he was at his own house. ~ James Baldwin

The Big Nurse is able to set the wall clock at whatever speed she wants by just turning one of those dials in the steel door; she takes a notion to hurry things up, she turns the speed up, and those hands whip around that disk like spokes in a wheel. The scene in the picture-screen windows goes through rapid changes of light to show morning, noon, and night - throb off and on furiously with day and dark, and everybody is driven like mad to keep up with that passing of fake time; awful scramble of shaves and breakfasts and appointments and lunches and medications and ten minutes of night so you barely get your eyes closed before the dorm light's screaming at you to get up and start the scramble again, go like a sonofabitch this way, going through the full schedule of a day maybe twenty times an hour, till the Big Nurse sees everybody is right up to the breaking point, and she slacks off on the throttle, eases off the pace on that clock-dial, like some kid been fooling with the moving-picture projection machine and finally got tired watching the film run at ten times its natural speed, got bored with all that silly scampering and insect squeak of talk and turned it back to normal. ~ Ken Kesey

We do not know it because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourself. ~ Paracelsus

Only a few centuries ago, a mere second in cosmic time, we knew nothing of where or when we were. Oblivious to the rest of the cosmos, we inhabited a kind of prison, a tiny universe bounded by a nutshell.

How did we escape from the prison? It was the work of generations of searchers who took five simple rules to heart:

1. Question authority. No idea is true just because someone says so, including me.

2. Think for yourself. Question yourself. Don't believe anything just because you want to. Believing something doesn't make it so.

3. Test ideas by the evidence gained from observation and experiment. If a favorite idea fails a well-designed test, it's wrong. Get over it.

4. Follow the evidence wherever it leads. If you have no evidence, reserve judgment.

And perhaps the most important rule of all...
5. Remember: you could be wrong. Even the best scientists have been wrong about some things. Newton, Einstein, and every other great scientist in history -- they all made mistakes. Of course they did. They were human.

Science is a way to keep from fooling ourselves, and each other. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

There is nothing as pitiful as a politician who is deficient in relaying untruths. ~ Stewart Stafford

Lincoln was right about not fooling all the people all the time. But Republicans haven't given up trying. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

And were you being good to yourself?
i don't think so. but, i forgive you, girl, who tallied stretch marks into reasons why no one should get close. i forgive you, silly girl, sweet breath, decent by default. i forgive you for being afraid. did everything betray you? even the rain you love so much made rust out of your jewelry? i forgive you, soft spoken girl speaking with fake brash voice, fooling no one. i see you, tender even on your hardest days. i forgive you, waiting for him to call, i forgive you, the diets and the cruel friends. especially for that one time you said 'i fucking give up on love, it's not worth it, i'd rather be alone forever'. you were just pretending, weren't you? i know you didn't mean that. your body, your mouth, your heart, made specifically for loving. sometimes the things we love, will kill us, but weren't we dying anyway? i forgive you for being something that will eventually die. perishable goods, fading out slowly, little human, i wouldn't want to be in a world where you don't exist. ~ Warsan Shire

Everyone wants to rule the world . . . Really, absolutely everyone. That's what it's all about, isn't it? That's what it's always about in the end. And every species believes it's number one. Every individual is firmly convinced that he or she alone has the right to ascend to the throne and issue orders to get rid of others. And in reality everyone is fooling themselves, because up there on the throne it's lonely and cold. ~ Akif Pirincci

Literature is claimed to be a mirror of the world," I said, "but the Outlanders are fooling themselves. The BookWorld is as orderly as people in the RealWorld *hope* their own world to be - it isn't a mirror, it's an aspiration. ~ Jasper Fforde

If you think you're immune to my charms, you're fooling yourself."
I pull my hand away and ignore how fiercely it tingles as I place it in my lap. "So, you don't think any woman can resist you?"
"I'm sure plenty of women could. But you? No. You're so starved of romance in your life, you're like an emotional skeleton. I intend to put some meat back on your bones. Make you believe in something other than a bleak apocalypse. ~ Leisa Rayven

But what I don't like - and what I don't think either Seymour or Buddy would like, either, as a matter of fact - is the way you talk about all these people. I mean you don't just despise what they represent - you despise them. It's too damn personal, Franny. I mean it. You get a real little homicidal glint in your eye when you talk about this Tupper, for instance. All this business about his going into the men's room to muss his hair before he comes in to class. All that. He probably does - it goes with everything else you've told me about him. I'm not saying it doesn't. But it's none of your business, buddy, what he does with his hair. It would be all right, in a way, if you thought his personal affectations were sort of funny. Or if you felt a tiny bit sorry for him for being insecure enough to give himself a little pathetic goddam glamour. But when you tell me about it - and I'm not fooling, now - you tell me about it as though his hair was a goddamn personal enemy of yours. That is not right - and you know it. If you're going to to war against the System, just do your shooting like a nice, intelligent girl - because the enemy's there, and not because you don't like his hairdo or his goddam necktie. ~ J.D. Salinger

If we consider the unblushing promises of reward ... promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased. ~ C.S. Lewis

When you pretend you don't feel hurt or angry or devastated, you're not fooling God. Be honest! Don't misunderstand; I am not encouraging you to be angry at God or to blame him. He deserves no blame. Rather, I am encouraging you to honestly confess to God your feelings of hurt, resentment, and anger. Often we look at suffering from our perspective and forget that God sees from another vantage point. ~ Randy Alcorn

So much was so easy. Glamour was second nature. It was just making folk see what they wanted to see. Fooling folk was as simple as singing. Tricking folk and telling lies, it was like breathing.
But this? Convincing someone of the truth that they were too twisted to see? How could you even begin? ~ Patrick Rothfuss