“I respectfully decline the invitation to join your hallucination.”

“I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement.”

“As distasteful as it is to decline your invitation, I'm afraid that it is preferable to attending yet another half-assed weekend eating gunky canapes in that cesspool of a shack you call a beach cottage.”

“If there is some divine plan that requires my survival and the deaths of all those children in day care, I respectfully decline to participate.”

“...according to the prevailing extroversion assumption, inviting you is a nice gesture, and pressuring you is a compliment—an indication that you are wanted. How many times have you equivocated on or even declined an invitation, only to be asked again—and again?”

“I stare at her, as dumbstruck as if she'd just admitted she's a Scientologist with an invitation to join Tom and Katie on the spaceship when it shows up.”