I Wear A Mask Quotes & Sayings

I think it's all a facade. I think you wear a mask to show us, the media and the public, how you want to be perceived, but behind closed doors and deep down inside lies the real Shin Shaojin. A man who is so egotistical, maniacal, and so power driven that he would sell his soul to the highest bidder if it meant getting to the top. — Justin Bienvenue

For 'Blue Jasmine,' I made a decision not to wear any make up in the last shot of the film, as I felt like she had such a mask on - I thought it would be a good idea to leave her with nothing and become completely transparent. — Cate Blanchett

One time I told her that she reminded me of that charming tale, the one with the red shoes."
Helen had always hated that story, in which a little girl who had dared to wear red shoes to her confirmation had been doomed to dance in them until she died. "You're referring to the one by Hans Christian Andersen? It's a morality tale about the wages of sin, is it not?"
His smile faded, and his gaze returned to hers, now appraising rather than dismissive. "I confess, I don't recall the moral of the story."
"No doubt it's been a long time since you've read it." Helen made her face into the inscrutable mask that had always annoyed the twins and provoked them to call her a sphinx. "The red shoes become instruments of death, after a girl yields to temptation. — Lisa Kleypas

Again And Again And Again

You said the anger would come back

just as the love did.

I have a black look I do not

like. It is a mask I try on.

I migrate toward it and its frog

sits on my lips and defecates.

It is old. It is also a pauper.

I have tried to keep it on a diet.

I give it no unction.

There is a good look that I wear

like a blood clot. I have

sewn it over my left breast.

I have made a vocation of it.

Lust has taken plant in it

and I have placed you and your

child at its milk tip.

Oh the blackness is murderous

and the milk tip is brimming

and each machine is working

and I will kiss you when

I cut up one dozen new men

and you will die somewhat,

again and again. — Anne Sexton

I look older. Maybe it's the short hair or maybe it's just that I wear all that has happened like a mask. Either way, I always thought I would be happy when I stopped looking like a child. But all I feel is a lump in my throat. I am no longer the daughter my parents knew. They will never know me as I am now. — Veronica Roth

I once laughed at the vanity of women of thirty or forty who whitened their ruddy old skin with lead, but now I know such salves are not disguises for old crones who wish to catch a young husband. Instead they are only a mask we wear so that we can, for a little while, still recognize ourselves. — Rebecca Johns

For me, Halloween is the best holiday in the world. It even beats Christmas. I get to dress up in a costume. I get to wear a mask. I get to go around like every other kid with a mask and nobody thinks I look weird. Nobody takes a second look. Nobody notices me. Nobody knows me. I — R.J. Palacio

I made a mask out of my face because I didn't realize I was quite beautiful. God blessed me so. I practically destroyed it. I had to wear heavy black eyelashes like bat wings, and dark lines under my eyes, and cut all my hair off, my long dark hair. Cut it off and stripped it silver and blonde. All those little maneuvers I did out of things that were happening in my life that upset me. — Edie Sedgwick

I make sure I have the best: I figure you could spend $800 on an outfit you wear three times, but with your hair it's there all the time. I also think it is really important to look after your colour once it's been done. I try and give my hair a really nourishing mask every so often to combat against all the styling. I also love to have beauty treatments that really benefit, like massages. t's divine to get up and feel all zen and relaxed. — Cat Deeley

The talk shows I've done are all radio for exactly this reason: I don't want to wear a rubber mask. — Gregory Benford

But he place a gentle palm under her chin and turned her face back to him. "I'm privileged to see you like this," he said, his eyes fierce. "Wear you social mask at your balls and parties and when you visit your friends out there, but when we are alone, just the two of us in here, promise me this: that you'll show me only your real face, no matter how ugly you might think it. That's our true intimacy, not sex, but the ability to be ourselves when we are together. (Winter Makepeace) — Elizabeth Hoyt

M. That's what I call her, this normal, nonexistent me. It's not that I've never done those things, kissed or danced or just "hung out." I have. But it was put-on, a character, a lie. I am so good at it - lying - but I can't lie to myself. I can pretend to be M; I can wear her like a mask. But I can't be her. I'll never be her. — Victoria Schwab

Well, when I was a kid, if my father was witnessing something that he thought was particularly outrageous or he was looking at some sort of a question that he thought lacked proper definition, he would say, Well, at least Jesse James had the honor to wear a mask. — Richard Neal

At first it was a bit strange and daunting to have to wear a mask, but afterwards I came to enjoy it. In warm conditions, though, it started to slip off my face. Other times they used this double-sided sticky tape, and I literally couldn't get it off my face. I would feel like I was ripping my face off and I had a lot of cuts and bruises because of it-huge red marks. People might think it was method acting. — Gerard Butler

Murana is the name of the mask I have designed for Venini: a volume to wear for filtering the reality through the glass of its surfaces, a face without sexual or racial connotations able to represent every kind of humanity, a soul for an object that could be casually perceived as a vase ... — Fabio Novembre

If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask.
If you want a different kind of love I'll wear a mask.
If you want to strike me down in anger here I stand.
If you want a partner in life take my hand.
I'm your man. — Leonard Cohen

I like having a job where I get to wear a mask all day. — Laura Van Den Berg

Perfection doesn't exist," I reply. "It's a mask people wear to conceal their ugly truths. Never trust someone who only ever smiles at you. — J.M. Darhower

I didn't have to wear a mask on Halloween to scare people, so I didn't need one to cover my face on the field! — Tommy McDonald

I wonder. If I had you wear that mask today, Anne, would you find the courage to tell me what is troubling you?"
Anne would very much have liked to confide in her father, but where in the world would she begin?
He leaned over and whispered in her ear. "I will tell you a secret, my dear. All of my children are shy. They have simply learned the art of wearing masks. — Lena Coakley

I've learned to wear my face as a mask, and generally I can write what I choose on it. — Mark Lawrence

I hope you forgive the unedifying sight of my struggle to express some of the truths of my inner self and to measure the distance between the mask of security, ease, confidence and assurance I wear (so easily that its features often lift into a smirk that looks like complacency and smugness) and the real condition of anxiety, self-doubt, self-disgust and fear in which much of my life then and now is lived. — Stephen Fry

Or maybe it's a ploy to get more sex." She gave him a look that curled his chopsticks. "Maybe it's working," she said. "Maybe I'll slip into something more comfortable," he said. "Not that Batman mask again." "Aw, c'mon, you can wear the utility belt." She thought about it. "Okay, but no stopping in the middle and shouting, 'Same Bat Time, same Bat Channel.' — Harlan Coben

I think we all wear some kind of mask. There are masks that shield us from others, but there are masks that embolden us, and you see that in carnival. The shiest child puts on a mask and can do anything and be anybody. — Edwidge Danticat

I suddenly see the world
as no longer viable:
you are out there burning the crops
with some new sublimate
This morning you left the bed
we still share
and went out to spread impotence
upon the world

I hate you.
I hate the mask you wear, your eyes
assuming a depth
they do not possess, drawing me
into the grotto of your skull
the landscape of bone
I hate your words
they make you think of fake
revolutionary bills
crisp imitation parchment
they sell at battlefields.

Last night, in this room, weeping
I asked you: what are you feeling?
do you feel anything?
Now in the torsion of your body
as you defoliate the fields we lived from
I have your answer. — Adrienne Rich

Outwardly, I hope, I wear my usual mask of detachment, even irony, for there has never been a situation,however dire, even this one, that did not strike me as containing at least some element of the human comedy. — Robert Harris

Do you think you wear a mask?'

'I'm wearing one right now.' Valentino smiled softly. 'We both are.'

'It's a sad thought.'

'Yes,' he said. 'But sometimes I wonder about the alternative. Imagine if we had no secrets, no respite from the truth. What if everything was laid bare the moment we introduced ourselves? — Catherine Doyle

If you could choose any mask to wear right now, what would it be?" Anne lay down her yarn. "I suppose if, as you say, I would grow into this mask, then I would make it of my own face . . . but a braver, better version of myself." "And what would this braver Anne do?" The answer came quickly, as if it had been there all along. I'd save them, she thought. — Lena Coakley

Wear the mask. Hide the man. Feel nothing. See everything. Move and kill. Move and kill. I am not a man. They are not men. — Pierce Brown

I want my son to wear a helmet 24 hours a day. If it was socially acceptable I'd be the first one to have my kid in a full helmet and like a cage across his face mask. — Will Arnett

I know that sometimes people fake on each other out of genuine motives to hold onto the object of their tenderest feelings. They see themselves as so inadequate that they feel forced to wear a mask in order to continuously impress the other. I do not want to "hold" you, I want you to "stay" out of your own need for me. — Eldridge Cleaver

It was called 'We Wear the Mask', by Paul Laurence Dunbar. I transcribed the first stanza and then started jotting down my reaction to it.

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, -
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

I used to wear masks so subtle I barely noticed them. A compliment to my mother after a dismal meal, a smile at my best friend when she sang out of tune, a forced laugh at my uncle's bad jokes. I wore small masks that came and went, like fleeting expressions.

I am stuck inside the mask I wear now. I want to rip it off. I want to show my scars to the world, to unveil the ugliness that breathes inside me. I want to be unashamed. I want to be unafraid. But every day the mask gets tighter, and I suffocate a little more.

I stopped writing. — Catherine Doyle

All the children had to wear a gas mask in case of a gas attack by the Germans. They tried to make the masks like Mickey Mouse faces so the children would like them. But I didn't. They had big ears on them. — Gerald Scarfe

Did I ever tell you that I want to wear a big yellow smiley-face mask and then put on the CD version of Bobby McFerrin's 'Don't Worry, Be Happy' and then take a girl and a dog - a collie, a chow, a sharpei, it doesn't really matter - and then hook up this transfusion pump, this IV set, and switch their blood, you know, pump the dog's blood into the hardbody and vice versa, did I ever tell you this? — Bret Easton Ellis

I think I'm not in this work to not look at life as it is. I'm not in it to say, "I want to wear a mask and escape," you know. I want to know what's happening in the world, and I want to have it touch me in a way that I can do something, my little part like that, and have it somehow translate. — Jake Gyllenhaal

Why do you wear a mask and hood?"
I think everybody will in the near future," was the man in black's reply. "They're terribly comfortable. — William Goldman

All my life I wanted to be a bank robber. Carry a gun and wear a mask. Now that it's happened I guess I'm just about the best bank robber they ever had. And I sure am happy. — John Dillinger

This cave is so dark I can't see any of you in your ninja outfits." "Sorry." the boys said and they peeled off their outfits and left them in a pile. The boys left Mollie's mask on because she looked awesome and mysterious, but she pulled it off anyway, because she was a dog and dogs don't wear masks. — Ella Minster

The reason I suggest that one speaks of a false-self system is that the 'personality', false self, mask, 'front', or persona that such individuals wear may consist in an amalgam of various part-selves, none of which is so fully developed as to have a comprehensive 'personality' of its own. — R.D. Laing

I used to have to wear a gas mask to school when I was a kid because of the dust. I would tell people that the first light I saw was in a movie theater, because the sun was just a little glow. — Dennis Hopper

Be willing to shed parts of your previous life. For example, in our 20s, we wear a mask; we pretend we know more than we do. We must be willing, as we get older, to shed cocktail party phoniness and admit, 'I am who I am.' — Gail Sheehy

I am a man that finds Death beautiful. If I have lived a million lives before this one, I know that I have spent each one searching for Death. It's hard to be entranced by those who aren't your soulmate, which is I why I don't acknowledge those like her, but her. Our hearts are meant to join again. Our souls are meant to join again. I am a man that finds Death beautiful, for Death doesn't wear a mask or lie. She simply smiles, and takes the breath of life away ... — Lionel Suggs