Top 66 Pretentious Quotes

All this is rather pretentious and fey to even talk about, but Flannery O’Connor sat down to write stories. The rest of us, some of us, don’t have that kind of wit and genius. We don’t do that. We sit down and have some accidents.

I live in Harlem, New York City. I am unmarried. I like ‘Tristan,’ goat’s milk, short novels, lyric poems, heat, simple folk, boats and bullfights; I dislike ‘Aida,’ parsnips, long novels, narrative poems, cold, pretentious folk, buses and bridges.

Without sounding pretentious, if you get the emotional truth right, then you’re set. Then the funny stuff you can pile on as much or as little as you want.

I think the problem with the term graphic novel is it sounds pompous, it sounds pretentious, whereas on the continent, they call it an album, which to me sounds, it’s got more much of a connotation of a kind of a music single and an album collection.

I never want to be pretentious.

When I was growing up, I was the most pretentious person I have ever met. I only read obscure books and watched obscure movies and only listened to obscure music.

It’s quite pretentious, really, isn’t it? The notion the audience is going to be interested in you for an hour and a half. Think too much about that and anxiety takes over.

I don’t wanna sound pretentious talking about myself.

‘Independent’ means one thing to me: It means that regardless of the source of financing, the director’s voice is extremely present. It’s such a pretentious term, but it’s auteurist cinema. Director-driven, personal, auteurist… Whatever word you want.

Elton John himself never seems pretentious but Bernie Taupin’s lyrics often do – sometimes pretentious in a clever sort of way, but pretentious nonetheless. There is a conflict between Elton’s and Bernie’s personal styles, no doubt about it.

It seems pretentious to assume that we are not creatures of action. I think often it takes a situation of extreme absurdity, extreme action, to push us to the limits of what our character is, and to change us as people.

What I don’t like are pompous, pretentious movies.

I don’t want to sound pretentious, but I love art, I like to go to museums, and I like to read books.

I have always been interested in theater, as an actor and as someone who looks upon theater – at the risk of sounding pretentious – as an icon by which we measure society… My life has been in the theater to an extent. It’s only an extension to write, direct, produce, whatever.

You can’t be pretentious about what we do, because at the end of the day, movies are about entertainment, and if people get 10 dollars’ worth, then that’s okay.

No one wants to be pretentious about what they do or take it seriously, because that is just weird.

I’d like to think I’m not quite so pretentious as to think my characters go off and live their lives once I’ve written the final page and switched the computer off.

Stand-up comedy and comedy in general is the ultimate form of free speech, because you get to poke holes in all the pretentious bubbles politicians and pundits and popes and pretenders try to float over our heads.

I’d love to have a 19th Century Russian book club where all the members had to act like the pretentious minor noblemen they were reading about.

Getting up to dance to your own stuff looks pretty pretentious. And leaving the dancefloor when it comes on is just awkward.

I don’t mean this to sound pretentious but I think that artists of all kinds are a rung up the ladder of the spiritual heirarchy, and for me there is something very religious about music.

Don’t call me a journalist; I hate the word. It’s pretentious!

I have a dread of sounding pretentious and try not to talk too much about what I do.

I’m so tired of this vision of fashion of a diva with a big ego, and you think of big dark glasses to be pretentious and keep far away from the people.

I don’t deal in pretentious kids’ parties.

Without sounding pretentious, it’s nice to always be surrounded by creative people who inspire me and keep my levels of creativity charged.

There’s a side that I want to do just like really retarded arty films like parody, pretentious art films that kind of are supposed to have some deep meaning.

Without sounding too pretentious, I was sort of a slave to the narrative. When the narrative cracks in, I have to go where it takes me. I had to go to the Bohemian Grove. It was the obvious end to the book.

My secret dream is to write an epic poem. That’s probably the most pretentious thing I’ve said.

I think energy is the most important thing that we can give to people as performers. Anything else is a little bit pretentious. But energy is not.

I love living in Burbank. It has major movie studios, huge media empires, but the city still feels like a mom-and-pop town. It’s not pretentious at all. It doesn’t feel like a big Hollywood town, and it has every right to be, but it’s very friendly and easygoing.

I felt that the Star Wars series became very pretentious as time went on. Just heavy and leaden.

I meditate – very pretentious – and I try to read as much as I can and swim at the Y.

Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.

I know it sounds really precious and pretentious, but I can’t actually remember deciding to want to be an actor. I just knew that I had too many feelings and I had to kind of get them out in some way.

I must have been a very strange child. I was very pretentious. Like Adrian Mole.

My actual biggest claim to fame is that – basically, this sounds awful and really pretentious – but my Twitter is verified. And if you’re already verified on Twitter, then your Vine is automatically verified.

I was a really pretentious teenager.

Films are always pretentious. There’s nothing more pretentious than a filmmaker.

I look at myself more as a storyteller than a screenwriter, as pretentious as that may sound, but that’s what really attracts me to TED Talks. For me, the really effective ones are being presented by expert storytellers.

Any image I have, it’s just what I do, but it comes off as being very pretentious. When you’re a bit in the public astigmatism, anything you do seems like you did it so somebody would see you do it, like showing up at the right parties.

I just could not believe that 30 years later we’re still looking at people who are supposed to write little 2-minute pop that when they actually try to do something that’s a little bit more they regard it as pretentious.

I think it’s pretentious to create art just for the sake of stroking the artists ego.

I don’t like pretentious films or pretentious people.

Call it my little gesture toward social conscience, but I like to think I’m teaching a certain number of people to read. Now that sounds pretentious!

Musicians always come off sounding a little bit pretentious, and a little bit… I don’t know, hypocritical, from what they do, talking about strong issues.

Intellectually the French are wonderfully open, in a way the British just don’t begin to be. You can question ideas in France, endlessly. In Britain, two things happen when you do that. Either you’re branded an intellectual, which is fundamentally mistrusted, or you’re branded a phony and pretentious, which people despise.

It sounds pretentious to say I ‘divide’ my time, but when I am home, that usually means my house in Atlanta or my cabin in the North Georgia Mountains. The latter is where I do the majority of my writing.

I think some period drama can be quite alienating, but ‘Downton’ isn’t. This is going to sound quite, um, pretentious, but someone said that it’s like a soap written by a poet.

It kind of sounds pretentious, but a film I find deeply romantic is ‘Buffalo ’66,’ which is a film by Vincent Gallo. It’s about how you break down all those barriers and expose yourself and open yourself up to ultimately being hurt.

I never personalize anything because I think that can be dangerous. For me, the best way is – this may sound pretentious – but it’s to breathe the character and get into the psychology of it.

She’s not pretentious at all. I love that about her. I mean, she’s this giant icon, but then she’s just this little bohemian chick in Ugg boots and sweats. Sadly, Cher is only human.

I do and re-do things that I used to do in a flash, because I want to be more perfectionist about these things. Maybe it sounds pompous and pretentious, but that’s the way I feel.

I am kind of a curmudgeonly person, so I don’t gravitate to groups or traditions, which is probably just pretentious of me.

I’ve learned through experience of playing different characters, some of whom were jerks, that when you play a character who is pretentious or obnoxious, in any way, it’s important to knock them down a peg.

Honestly, I don’t focus on what my writing is called. I don’t mean to sound artsy and pretentious, I just really can’t think of things in that way. For me, the point is telling a story that keeps people up past bedtime, while hopefully exploring ideas that resonate.

Who names themselves ‘The Situation?’ I do not take myself seriously like that – not in the least bit – that would be so pretentious.