If I’m pretending I’m either attempting to expand the scope of my world through the magic of my imagination, or I’m attempting to flee the whole of it because of the depth of my fear.

To pretend is to do nothing more than imagine life as something wonderful so that we don’t have to incur the pain that it takes to actually make life wonderful.

I pretend to give gifts that people pretend to be gifts so that I can pretend that I gave something that actually cost me something. And what pretending or this sort gives me is the gift of a pretend life.

The best way to see majesty is to strip away everything that pretends to be majestic so that which is fake wholly collapses in the face of that which is majestic. And God in a manger is likely the most remarkable example we have of such a monumental truth.

Pretending is the outcome of desperately wanting to achieve something, but forfeiting it to the whimsy of imagination because we lack the faith to believe that we could achieve it. And if we actually started to pretend that we could achieve it, in time maybe we wouldn’t have to pretend anymore.

Humility is the greatest shaper of souls and crafter of character, for it wipes away all the grandiose things that we spend so much of our lives pretending to be, so that we can spend all of our lives being the exceptional person that we were actually created to be.

Doing ‘nothing’ is often cowardice that we’ve dressed up to look like discretion.

I pretend to give gifts that people pretend to be gifts so that I can pretend that I gave something that actually cost me something. And what pretending of this sort gives me is the gift of a pretend life.

The best I can do is to ‘pretend’ that I’m my own god. But in the pretending I have to pretend that I’m not pretending, and somehow that doesn’t sound very god-like to me.