Mask Quotes

Darkness just loosens the mask. Sharpens the mind's eye. Makes the color of a remembered pencil, or a tick of waxy red on a cracked plaster wall, as vivid as that taillight a few feet away.

No one is as simple as they may seem to be.

It is humiliating to realize that when you drive yourself underground, when you fake who you are, often you do so for people you do not even like or respect.

It was as if he had two faces, one of utmost calm, one of furious action; and he wore both with ease. He was like the animal whose face he wore, able to sit in silence for hours, without moving a muscle, then flying like a raging storm into battle, returning again to perfect calm when the fight was over.

There’s no such thing as a good or bad person: there are just people who have each been or seem to have been good or bad to you, someone, or some people, thus far.

What I wear on and off stage is my mask. You see, a mask doesn't hide you, it exposes you.

The reason some people put on a mask is not in their blood but it is in their fear that we judge them too soon.

It often occurs that pride and selfishness are muddled with strength and independence. They are neither equal nor similar; in fact, they are polar opposites. A coward may be so cowardly that he masks his weakness with some false personification of power. He is afraid to love and to be loved because love tends to strip bare all emotional barricades. Without love, strength and independence are prone to losing every bit of their worth; they become nothing more than a fearful, intimidated, empty tent lost somewhere in the desert of self.

There is a face beneath this mask, but it isn't me. I'm no more that face than I am the muscles beneath it, or the bones beneath that.

All too often, we mask truth in artifice, concealing ourselves for fear of losing the ones we love or prolonging a deception for those we wish to expose. We hide behind that which brings us comfort from pain and sadness or use it to repel a truth too devastating to accept.

It’s all society is, the repressed sex drives of men, the objectification of women, their paranoia, the posturing, the macho stances, the beauty standard, it’s all just one charade masking a never ending hard on.

I mask my hate. I mask my pain. One thing that I can't mask is my dwindling grade point average." -Dreams, Smiles, and Bloody Tears

When my turn on the program comes, I am not nervous at all—because all this is happening out of time, out of space. I am, for a moment, a figure of my own fantasy, and I play my appointed role as if I were in the movies.

You know, it's never wise to tempt the devil"His gaze lowered to her hand, still locked in his grip, her finger glistening with pear juice.His rich voice lowered to raw huskiness "had I not this mask, I should be of a mind to suck that juice right off your fingers

In fact the "mask" theme has come up several times in my background reading. Richard Sennett, for example, in "The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism", and Robert Jackall, in "Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate managers", refer repeatedly to the "masks" that corporate functionaries are required to wear, like actors in an ancient Greek drama. According to Jackall, corporate managers stress the need to exercise iron self-control and to mask all emotion and intention behind bland, smiling, and agreeable public faces. Kimberly seems to have perfected the requisite phoniness and even as I dislike her, my whole aim is to be welcomed into the same corporate culture that she seems to have mastered, meaning that I need to "get in the face" of my revulsion and overcome it. But until I reach that transcendent point, I seem to be stuck in an emotional space left over from my midteen years: I hate you; please love me.

The reason some people put on a mask in not in their blood but it is in their fear that we judge them too soon.

Because we know he was simply a man, with weakness and frailties. Who yearned for the same things all of us do--to love and be loved

Perfection can mask imperfection.

People loved to think they were getting a deal. Four times out of five they would look right past what they didn’t want to see.

Snakes hide in grass, people behind their lies.

I always am in a role, lovely – for you, for them – even for myself. Yeah... Even when I’m alone, I am still in a role – and I myself am the most exacting audience I have ever had.

Everything's always changing, Charlie. We become who we are. The mask melts into the face.