Jonnyhames

“Perhaps the individual is so viable a god because he can actually understand the ceremonial significance of the way he is treated, and quite on his own can respond dramatically to what is proffered him. In contacts between such deities there is no need for middlemen; each of these gods is able to serve as his own priest.”
― Erving Goffman, Interaction Ritual - Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior

“...the issue becomes not whether a person has experience with a stigma of his own, because he has, but rather how many varieties he has had his own experience with.”
― Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity

“What if I were to open the gates and God was not behind them? What if there was no God, after a hundred thousand centuries of waiting? As long as those doors remain closed, there is always a possibility. Open that door, and the possibility might evaporate.”
― Lance Parkin, Doctor Who: The Infinity Doctors

“And to the degree that the individual maintains a show before others that he himself does not believe, he can come to experience a special kind of alienation from self and a special kind of wariness of others.”
― Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life