Dramaturgy Goffman Quotes & Sayings

Individuals are concerned not
with the moral issue of realizing these standards, but with
the amoral issue of engineering a convincing impression that
these standards are being realized. Our activity, then, is
largely concerned with moral matters, but as performers we
do not have a moral concern in these moral matters. As
performers we are merchants of morality. Our day is given
over to intimate contact with the goods we display and our
minds are filled with intimate understandings of them; but it
may well be that the more attention we give to these goods,
th e more d is ta n t we feel from them and from those who are
believing enough to buy them. To use a different imagery,
the very obligation and profitablility of appearing always in
a steady moral light, of being a socialized character, forces
us to be the sort of person who is practiced in the ways of
the stage. — Erving Goffman

The worst thing for a singer/songwriter is to run out of songs. — Michael Kiwanuka

But it doesn't matter what you're doing, it matters how you're doing it. — Dan Savage

I'd like to marry you, if you think that would be okay. — Nicholas Sparks

I love people. Everybody. I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me. My love's not impersonal yet not wholly subjective either. I would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person. But I am not omniscient. I have to live my life, and it is the only one I'll ever have. And you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time ... — Sylvia Plath

I learned three things that night: 1) sharing a bed is't nearly as intimate as making out in a too-small back seat, 2) inexplicably, some bras unhook in the front, 3) Cassidy hadn't known I was Jewish. — Robyn Schneider

There has been, down through the ages, a very real and "purposeful" conspiracy to thwart the plans of God. — Curtis A. Chamberlain

There's nothing like a headstrong woman to make you happy to be alive. — Wendelin Van Draanen

The ubiquity of the Divine presence is the only true support, and I am sometimes astonished how persons, who evidently do not possess that grand source of consolation, keep up their spirits under trials and difficulties. It must be owing to careless tempers and nerves of brass. — Hannah More

The prejudice of unfounded belief often degenerates into the prejudice of custom, and becomes at last rank hypocrisy. When men, from custom or fashion or any worldly motive, profess or pretend to believe what they do not believe, nor can give any reason for believing, they unship the helm of their morality, and being no longer honest to their own minds they feel no moral difficulty in being unjust to others. — Thomas Paine

It would be so simple to allow children, when tired of sitting, to rise, and when tired of writing, to desist, and then their bones would not be twisted. — Maria Montessori

I'm behind you." I spun to see Derek. "I can't win," he said. "You're as skittish as a kitten. — Kelley Armstrong

Learn to live more in the Self. Come down a little bit to eat and talk as necessary. — Goswami Kriyananda

All right, I say. I don't smile. Why tempt her to friendship? — Margaret Atwood