Richelle Mead Quotes

Give me an honest con man any day.

The con movie is a little bit different where maybe we tell you what we're going to do but it never goes down the way you expect because there's so much double-crossing and cheats and lies going on along the whole way.

For the grifter, ripping people off is seldom the point. The grifter is an artiste who invests in the long con.

You set me up," I say. "One big con. You can't blame me because I turned out not to be gullible enough. You can't blame the mark. That's not how it works. Have some respect for the nature of the game.

The secret of being a top-notch con man is being able to know what the mark wants, and how to make him think he's getting it.

Just like my Uncle Charlie used to say, just before he sprung the trap: He said, "You can't cheat and honest man! Never give a sucker an even break or smarten up a chump!

Every swindle is driven by a desire for easy money; it's the one thing the swindler and the swindled have in common.

My opinion is that he's a swindler and you're a sucker.

Great liars are also great magicians.

And I think it's because good cons are all based on the victim's need, and the successful con artist is the one, I guess, who can exploit that. I remember reading something about this, that one of the great traits of confidence tricksters is the level that they flatter their victim.

Hey, I fool the camera. I'm a liar, a magician.

I feel like a fraud... My name is not even actually Ashton. Ashton is my middle name.

This is the ultimate con game - I'm having fun and people pay me to do it.

A successful swindler has to be a great salesman even more than a great actor.

The reason con artists get away with what they get away with is, their victims are ashamed of their own blindness and their own gullibility, and they tend to just quietly go away.

One of the things about the con artist lifestyle is that all the romance is sort of sloppy and fast and loose.

It's true that people will take advantage of you in Nigeria, but this happens everywhere in the world.

The best confidence artist makes us feel not as if we're being taken for a ride but as if we are genuinely wonderful human beings who are acting the way wonderful human beings act and getting what we deserve.

The name 'con artist' really does capture it. They're artists, and I have admiration for all artists.

Three-card monte is one of the most persistent and effective cons in history. The games still pop up along city streets. But we tend to dismiss the victims as rubes.

The most important thing for any con artist is never to think like a mark. Marks think they can get something for nothing. Marks think they can get what they don’t deserve and could never deserve. Marks are stupid and pathetic and sad. Marks think they’re going to go home one night and have the girl they’ve loved since they were a kid suddenly love them back. Marks forget that whenever something’s too good to be true, that’s because it’s a con.

She can’t help it. She loves the con. I tell myself I’m not like her, but I have to admit I love it too.

It was the heart of any scam or fiddle -- keep the punter uncertain, or, if he is certain, make him certain of the wrong thing.

I didn't want to write another book about fraudulence.

I know a con when I see one.