John le Carre Quotes

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

I’ve always thought you are what you are and you shouldn’t pretend to be anyone else. But Oliver used to correct me and explain that you are whoever it is you’re pretending to be.

You have to put on more faces to pretend who you are.

As long as I can wear a wig I can be any character, and in real life I can be myself.

Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.

We all put on faces, as Walter White does. We put on faces when we meet our friends, when we meet new people, when we present ourselves in interviews. We try to be who the people we meet want us to be, or who we want to truly be.

The mask, given time, comes to be the face itself

Being another character is more interesting than being yourself.

I spent more time playing a person I was not than the person I am.

We're actors in our lives, pretendin' to be who we want people to think we are.

As an actor, you're always playing different people, so you yourself are always kind of going through an identity crisis.

To be able to pretend to be something that I'm frankly not is very liberating and exciting.

I wake up and play a different person every day. Playing all these different characters and trying to figure out who your true authentic self is at the core of that as you're playing all these different roles, and man, that self-awareness starts to come into effect. And you start to see who you really are.

Man is a make-believe animal: he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.

Acting like the person I'm supposed to be has always been the easiest thing for me.

We are not what we seem. We are more than what we seem. The actor knows that. And because the actor knows that hidden inside himself there's a wizard and a king, he also knows that when he's playing himself in his daily life, he's playing a part, he's performing, just as he's performing when he plays a part on stage.

I find it very hard to play a part, then take it off like a cheap suit and become Mr Normal - Mr. Nice Guy.

I'm from really humble beginnings. I've never been this Hollywood diva, but you get caught up in what you're pretending to be.

I'm supposed to convince you, for two hours, that I'm somebody else. Now if you know everything about my life, if you think you've got me figured out and you think you know all my dark secrets, how am I ever going to convince you that I'm somebody else?

Acting is what I do with who I am.

For the longest time, I still tried to hold up this act - this nice-guy, superhero, role-model persona - that wasn't really me and wasn't serving me.

We all have split personalities; we all wear masks at some point in our careers.

We are all doing drag. Every single person on this planet is doing it.

I think of the spam folder not as Pandora's box but as a costume shop in which you can play and play at being whoever and whatever you wish. If only for a time.

I credit literature for the reason I act because that was the door to me saying, ‘Oh! I can be somebody else. I can exist as someone else.’