41 Quotes About Pretentiousness

Such are the inconsistences of humans in uniform, that the same endothermic vertebrates, which were believed a blessing, an aid to nostalgia, a sign from God, could also be shot for food (see p281-88) and employed as tools.

For it did seem to be the case, she reflected, that the owners of art galleries were very frequently men who were unable to use ordinary language with any precision and who walked about in a horrible blizzard of peculiar superlatives and meaningless coinages from which they tried to shelter themselves by a wild flailing of their hands.

I pick up the list of Benji's five favorite books because we've got work to do:"Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon. He's a pretentious fuck and a liar."Underworld" by Don DeLillo. He's a snob."On the Road" by Jack Kerouac. He's a spoiled passport-carrying fuck stunted in eighth grade."Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" by David Foster Wallace. Enough already."The Red Badge of Courage" by Stephen Crane. He's got Mayflowers in his blood.

These were wannabe elites who, once they popped on big-boy pants, would be infiltrating New York with their pretentiousness.

He had an air of magnificent melancholy sophistication, as if his proper place were elsewhere, somewhere infinitely more compelling even than Brakebills, and he'd been confined to his present setting by a grotesque divine oversight, which he tolerated with as much good humor as could be expected.