Mask Quotes

“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.”
― Jim MORRISON

“Anyone who has a continuous smile on his face conceals a toughness that is almost frightening.”
― Greta Garbo

“Chronicler shook his head and Bast gave a frustrated sigh. "How about plays? Have you seen The Ghost and the Goosegirl or The Ha'penny King?"
Chronicler frowned. "Is that the one where the king sells his crown to an orphan boy?"
Bast nodded. "And the boy becomes a better king than the original. The goosegirl dresses like a countess and everyone is stunned by her grace and charm." He hesitated, struggling to find the words he wanted. "You see, there's a fundamental connection between seeming and being. Every Fae child knows this, but you mortals never seem to see. We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be."
Chronicler relaxed a bit, sensing familiar ground. "That's basic psychology. You dress a beggar in fine clothes, people treat him like a noble, and he lives up to their expectations."
"That's only the smallest piece of it," Bast said. "The truth is deeper than that. It's..." Bast floundered for a moment. "It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story."
Frowning, Chronicler opened his mouth, but Bast held up a hand to stop him. "No, listen. I've got it now. You meet a girl: shy, unassuming. If you tell her she's beautiful, she'll think you're sweet, but she won't believe you. She knows that beauty lies in your beholding." Bast gave a grudging shrug. "And sometimes that's enough."
His eyes brightened. "But there's a better way. You show her she is beautiful. You make mirrors of your eyes, prayers of your hands against her body. It is hard, very hard, but when she truly believes you..." Bast gestured excitedly. "Suddenly the story she tells herself in her own head changes. She transforms. She isn't seen as beautiful. She is beautiful, seen."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Chronicler snapped. "You're just spouting nonsense now."
"I'm spouting too much sense for you to understand," Bast said testily. "But you're close enough to see my point.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“One of the greatest tragedies in life is to lose your own sense of self and accept the version of you that is expected by everyone else.”
― K.L. Toth

“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.”
― Steve Moore, V for Vendetta

“Know that it is a corpse who loves you and adores you and will never, never leave you!...Look, I am not laughing now, crying, crying for you, Christine, who have torn off my mask and who therefore can never leave me again!...Oh, mad Christine, who wanted to see me!”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“He was like one of those pictures full of small errors, the kind you could only pick out by searching the image from every angle, and even then, a few always slipped by. On the surface, Eli seemed perfectly normal, but now and then Victor would catch a crack, a sideways glance, a moment when his roommate's face and his words, his look and his meaning, would not line up. Those fleeting slices fascinated Victor. It was like watching two people, one hiding in the other's skin. And their skin was always too dry, on the verge of cracking and showing the color of the thing beneath.”
― Victoria Schwab, Vicious

“Here too it’s masquerade, I find:
As everywhere, the dance of mind.
I grasped a lovely masked procession,
And caught things from a horror show…
I’d gladly settle for a false impression,
If it would last a little longer, though.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“A mask tells us more than a face.”
― Oscar Wilde

“You’ll never know who you are unless you shed who you pretend to be.”
― Vironika Tugaleva

“Nothing like a mask to reveal somebody's true nature.”
― Stuart Turton, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

“Everybody is equally weak on the inside, just that some present their ruins as new castles and become kings –”
― Simona Panova, Nightmarish Sacrifice

“EA: Is it the smoke that smells like vanilla?

Audience: Yeah.

EA: Yeah, they do that to mask the chemicals that are actually killing you.”
― Emilie Autumn

“I am looking for the one I can’t fool.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“Ask anyone and they'll most likely say their family is crazy, and if they don't say their family is crazy, their friends are crazy. That's because everyone is crazy after taking the mask off. People are most themselves when not really trying to fit in, when either alone or around those already closest to them, and that is crazy.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“I thought by masking the depression with silence, the feelings might disappear.”
― Sharon E. Rainey, Making a Pearl from the Grit of Life

“Of all individuals, the hated, the shunned, and the peculiar are arguably most themselves. They wear no masks whatsoever in order to be accepted and liked; they do seem most guarded, but only by their own hands: as compared to the populace, they are naked.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“If we’re wrapping ourselves up to conceal any vulnerability, whatever happens to us has to go through all those extra layers. Sometimes love doesn’t even reach where we truly live.”
― Alexandra Katehakis, Mirror of Intimacy: Daily Reflections on Emotional and Erotic Intelligence

“If you wear a mask for too long, there will come a time when you can not remove it without removing your face.”
― Matshona Dhliwayo

“I had reached up and pulled the castle of dreams down around him.”
― Susan Kay

“Daniel supposed he had a secret life. Most people did; it was hardly possible to live without one.”
― P.D. James, Original Sin

“How many of them have secrets they don't want the world to know? How many of them wear masks wherever they go? We're anything but typical.”
― Kelsey Sutton, Some Quiet Place

“Emotions don’t interfere in my acting, nor in my life.”
― Simona Panova, Nightmarish Sacrifice

“All facades fall sometime, then the mask comes off and the real heart is seen.”
― Jessiqua Wittman, A Memoir of Mercy

“Here is the life you have tried to throw away. Here is your second chance. Here is the destiny you have tried to shake off by inventing a hundred false roles, a hundred false identities for yourself. It will look at first like disaster, but is really good fortune in disguise, since fate too knows how to follow your evasions through a hundred forms of its own. Now you will become at last the one you intended to be.”
― David Malouf, An Imaginary Life

“We might feel that we must demonstrate explicitly when we’re upset, or not upset. This perceived need may stem from our family of origin, from how we learned to be heard when a simple “no” wasn’t enough. We may have learned to mask certain feelings, or portray feelings that weren’t ours. But as adults we each need to learn to state our personal truth without having to prove it or shout it.”
― Alexandra Katehakis, Mirror of Intimacy: Daily Reflections on Emotional and Erotic Intelligence

“A beautiful face can mask great evil...”
― Francine Rivers, A Voice in the Wind

“A mask is not to disguise who you are but to show who you really are.”
― Chloe Thurlow, Sophie's Secret

“And the touch of her own mask, at first cool and clammy leather, but quickly like a second skin, and the play it gives her, herself a stage, her every breath a performance, and yet (herein lies the magic) also and entirely true. Every game, every lie flirting and cruel - and the house is full of them, games and lies - is real as knives, for the masquerade has come to define the night. The false face of everyday, that hides reality beneath flesh and skin, is itself hidden beneath the fantasy that, because it is a product and reflection of the mind, is an honest facade. Sadie has lived a wary, defensive life, always urged by that self-preserving instinct to stay small, hidden, safe. She did not know she had an imp inside her until she wore it on her face.

("One Of The Hungry Ones")”
― Holly Phillips, Best New Horror 17