Quotes & Sayings About Private Thoughts

A novel is utterly your own creation, a very private process. I think of a novel as a noun and a screenplay as a verb. In a novel, very little needs to happen; you can explore a person's memories and thoughts and fantasies. In a screenplay, it's all action; you must push the story on. — Deborah Moggach

In private places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at once to draw to itself the sky as its temple, the sun as its cradle. Nature stretches out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I began to think about God. I mean, the notion of a Supreme Being existing somewhere began to creep into my private thoughts. Not because I wanted to strike Him on the face, to punch Him out for what He was about to do to me - to Jenny, that is. No, the kind of religious thoughts I had were just the opposite. Like, when I woke up in the morning and Jenny was there. Still there. I'm sorry, embarrassed even, but I hoped there was a God I could say thank you to. — Erich Segal

In actual fact, however, the revolt of Ibsen and Shaw against the conventional nineteenth century drama could very well be described as a return to Shakespeare, as an attempt once again to present human beings in their historical and social setting and not, as playwrights since the Restoration had done, either as wholly private or as embodiments of the social manners of a tiny class. Shakespeare's plays, it is true, are not, in the Shavian sense, "dramas of thought," that is to say, not one of his characters is an intellectual: it is true, as Shaw says, that, when stripped of their wonderful diction, the philosophical and moral views expressed by his characters are commonplaces, but the number of people in any generation or society whose thoughts are not commonplace is very small indeed. On the other hand, there is hardly one of his plays which does not provide unending food for thought, if one cares to think about it. — W. H. Auden

He chucled. Even as he said my most private thoughts, even as I burned with outrage and shame, I trembled at the grip still on my mind. Rhysand turned to the High Lord. "I'm curious: Why did she wonder if it would feel good to have you bite her breast the way you bit her neck?"
"Let. Her. Go." Tamlin's face was twisted with such feral rage that it struck a different, deeper chord of terror in me.
"If it's any consolation," Rhysand confided to him, "she would have been the one for you - and you might have gotten away with it. A bit late, though. She's more stubborn than you are. — Sarah J. Maas

Christ choosing solitude for private prayer, doth not only hint to us the danger of distraction and deviation of thoughts in prayer, but how necessary it is for us to choose the most convenient places we can for private prayer. Our own fickleness and Satan's restlessness call upon us to get into such places where we may freely pour out our soul into the bosom of God [Mark 1.35]. — Thomas Brooks

It was the comfort of knowing that she was not quite so strange, that there were other people who found delight in private challenges and quiet lives. People who lived in their thoughts as much as in the real, physical world. — Daphne Kalotay

The smile, the look, tugged at Eleanor's heart. Even in the fleeting glance, she'd seen great love in Ian's eyes, his determination to finish this letter and send it to Beth so she could enjoy decoding it. A way to tell her sweet nothings that no one else could understand. Private thoughts, shared between husband and wife. — Jennifer Ashley

I always rejoice when I see a tribunal filled with a man of an upright and inflexible temper, who in the execution of his country's laws can overcome all private fear, resentment, solicitation, and even pity it self. Whatever passion enters into a sentence or decision, so far will there be in it a tincture of injustice. In short, justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is therefore always represented as blind, that we may suppose her thoughts are wholly intent on the equity of a cause, without being diverted or prejudiced by objects foreign to it. — Joseph Addison

I can stand onstage all night talking to thousands of people about my most vulnerable and private feelings - like my thoughts on the last guy who was inside me, or the fact that I eat like the glutton in the movie Se7en when I'm drunk. But I really don't do as well at parties or gatherings where I feel like I am obligated to be more "social." Usually — Amy Schumer

Superficial to understand the journal as just a receptable for one's private, secret thoughts - like a confidante who is deaf, dumb, and illiterate. In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself ... The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather - in many cases - offers an alternative to it. — Susan Sontag

So that's it. I've told you everything I know. Think clearly and think for yourself. Learn to use language to express those thoughts. Love somebody with all your heart. And with everyone, whether you love them or not, find out if you can be helpful. But really, it's even simpler than that. After all this time, and all these talks in public and in private, I think I get it now. If I were taking my friend Arnold's suggestion and spoke from my deathbed, I think I know what I'd say. I see now that I had my meaning all along, I just had to notice it. The meaning of life ... is life. Not noticing life is what's meaningless, even down to the last second. — Alan Alda

In a place that feels safe and private, constructively express your sadness by allowing yourself to cry. While crying, acknowledge your hurts and losses. Don't indulge any negative thoughts about yourself. Just keep telling yourself, "I'm fine. It's okay to cry. I just feel sad." You'll immediately feel washed clean, even joyful. — Jude Bijou

He said, You'll write it not because there's no possibility it'll be found but because it costs too much to not write it. — China Mieville

How silly of us to think we can hide from God. How insane of us to think our thoughts are private, don't you know that nothing is hidden? And what is it that you are hiding from anyway, your light, the love that you are? Are you afraid of remembering that you are a Child of God? That you are whole and holy, what a beautiful golden being of Light you are my child. There is nothing you see in this world that is as beautiful and brilliant as you, the most beautiful sunset, or sunrise is nothing in comparison to you. I have one thought and that is for you to remember who you are, where you are and how much you are LOVED. -God — Sharon Kay Casey

[I'm] an extremely private dude and all this is happening so damn quick. I really haven't had any time to rationalize it. But it's nothing that I'm going to let freak me out or take control of me or my thoughts or my real life. — Heath Ledger

Your private thoughts give birth to your public acts. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Sharing your most private thoughts make you vulnerable. — Jacqueline DeMontravel

Then took the quilt out of its linen wrapper for the pleasure of the brilliant colors and the feel of the velvet. The needlework was very fine and regular. Adair hated needlework and she could not imagine sitting and stitching the fine crow's-foot seams.
Writing was the same, the pinching of thoughts into marks on paper and trying to keep your cursive legible, trying to think of the next thing to say and then behind you on several sheets of paper you find you have left permanent tracks, a trail, upon which anybody could follow you. Stalking you through your deep woods of private thought.
— Paulette Jiles

The perception of other people and the intersubjective world is problematic only for adults. The child lives in a world which he unhesitatingly believes accessible to all around him. He has no awares of himself or of others as private subjectives, nor does he suspect that all of us, himself included, are limited to one certain point of view of the world. That is why he subjects neither his thoughts, in which he believes as they present themselves, to any sort of criticism. He has no knowledge of points of view. For him men are empty heads turned towards one single, self-evident world where everything takes place, even dreams, which are, he thinks, in his room, and even thinking, since it is not distinct from words. — Maurice Merleau Ponty

Even though its common knowledge these days, it never ceases to amaze me that all the richness of our mental life - all our feelings, our emotions, our thoughts, our ambitions, our love life, our religious sentiments and even what each of us regards us his own intimate private self - is simply the activity of these little specks of jelly in your head, in your brain. There is nothing else. — V.S. Ramachandran

The whole panoply of the universe has been neatly expressed to them as things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. This frees the mind from unnecessary thoughts and gives it a cutting edge where it matters. Your normal animal, in fact, never tries to walk and chew gum at the same time. The average human, on the other hand, thinks about all sorts of things around the clock, on all sorts of levels, with interruptions from dozens of biological calendars and time-pieces. There's thoughts about to be said, and private thoughts, and real thoughts, and thoughts about thoughts, and a whole gamut of subconscious thoughts. — Terry Pratchett

Even as he said my most private thoughts, even as I burned with outrage and shame, I trembled at the grip still on my mind. Rhysand turned to the High Lord. "I'm curious: Why did she wonder if it would feel good to have you bite her breast the way you bit her neck?"
"Let. Her. Go." Tamlin's face was twisted with such feral rage that it struck a different, deeper chord of terror in me. — Sarah J. Maas

Just before the Hathaways had arrived, Captain Swansea, who had spent four years serving in India, had been regaling some of the guests with an account of a tiger hunt in Vishnupur. The tiger had stalked the spotted deer, brought it down with a pounce, and clamped the back of its neck in its jaws. Women and even a few men had grimaced and exclaimed in horror as Swansea described how the tiger had proceeded to eat the chital while it was still alive. "The vicious beast!" one of the women had gasped.
But as soon as Amelia Hathaway entered the room, Cam had found himself entirely in sympathy with the tiger. There was nothing he wanted more than to bite the tender back of her neck and drag her to some private place where he could feast on her for hours. — Lisa Kleypas

As I grew up in that world and saw how much it affected her world and how much it affected our childhood, it made me very aware of politics. Of course, I have my own private feelings and thoughts, but I don't care to share them. — Natasha Richardson

Investigations "eliminated solipsism but not the horror." The only difference between this new predicament and that of the Tractatus was that rather than being trapped alone in our private thoughts, we were trapped together, with other people, in the institution of language. — James Ryerson

We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society. — Alan W. Watts

The Holy Spirit Asks that you accept the idea of one mind wholeheartedly, for this is the Correction to the error called ego. The ego was the belief in private minds with private thoughts, but if mind is one the ego has no foundation on which to stand. Forgiveness reflects the oneness that shines beyond perception. Forgiveness unifies and shows the world anew. You are not going insane, you are going inward to sanity of mind. And unified perception is the gateway to the remembrance of God and Christ. — David Hoffmeister

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy. — Bertrand Russell

Mostly, drawings are things I make for myself - I do them in sketchbooks. They are mental experiments - private inner thoughts when I'm not sure what will come out. — Sigmar Polke

We learn about life by exploring the texture and depth of space that composes our private inner world. In solitude we revisit our wounded feelings, sins, doubts, and deepest despair, replay poignant memories of loved ones, project what we are becoming, and ascertain the purpose of our being. — Kilroy J. Oldster

A movie can evoke feelings, thoughts, it is all there and happening, there is no control over the images when you are watching a movie. You are transported for three hours to a world where you see real people. In a novel it is private - there's only you, and words on pages. The landscape is in your mind and in your feelings. — Jay Neugeboren

I'd been listening to African-American music since the first record I ever bought, which was by Sam Cooke. And it sounds more like my private thoughts that I never thought I would be able to articulate - I never thought I would be able to express publicly. — David Toop

Straightening himself and stealthily fingering his pocket-knife he started after her to follow this woman, this excitement, which seemed even with its back turned to shed on him a light which connected them, which singled him out, as if the random uproar of the traffic had whispered through hallowed hands his name, not Peter, but his private name which he called himself in his own thoughts. — Virginia Woolf

If I tell these private thoughts of mine, it is because I know they are not mine alone, and that practically everyone is trying to say the same things and that the writer is only a man who says out loud what other people think or whisper. — Eugene Ionesco

It's odd how different a house feels when one is alone in it. It makes it easier to think rather private thoughts ... — Dodie Smith

The sum is this, - As thou makest conscience of praying daily, so do thou of the acting of thy graces in meditation; and more especially in meditating on the joys of heaven, To this end, set apart one hour or half hour every day, wherein thou mayst lay aside all worldly thoughts, and with all possible seriousness and reverence, as if thou wert going to speak with God himself, or to have a sight of Christ, or of that blessed place so do thou withdraw thyself into some secret place, and set thyself wholly to the following work: if thou canst, take Isaac's time and place, who went forth into the field in the evening to meditate; but if thou be a servant, or poor man, that cannot have that leisure, take the fittest time and place that thou canst, though it be when thou are private about thy labours.
Were there left one spark of wit or reason, they would never sell their rest for toil, or sell their glory for worldly vanities, nor venture heaven for the pleasure of a sin (627). — Richard Baxter

Seth can get irritated/frustrated with Jane and me. This exerpt is from the private session of November 11, 1979: " ... the same kind of reaction, however, are involved in all activities, and it is sometimes frustrating for me that you cannot perceive the fascinating facets of any event. You still - and I do not simply mean you two alone - do not feel the unsurpassable force that thoughts have. You do not understand that they do form events, that to change events you must first change thoughts. You get what you concentrate on." — Jane Roberts

o here I am, upside down in a woman. Arms patiently crossed, waiting, waiting and wondering who I'm in, what I'm in for. My eyes close nostalgically when I remember how I once drifted in my translucent body bag, floated dreamily in the bubble of my thoughts through my private ocean in slow-motion somersaults, colliding gently against the transparent bounds of my confinement, the confiding membrane that vibrated with, even as it muffled, the voices of conspirators in a vile enterprise. That was in my careless youth. Now, fully inverted, not an inch of space to myself, knees crammed against my belly, my thoughts as well as my head are fully engaged. I've no choice, my ear is pressed all day and night against the bloody walls. I listen, make mental notes, and I'm troubled. I'm hearing pillow talk of deadly intent and I'm terrified by what awaits me, by what might draw me in. — Ian McEwan

To whom I owe the leaping delight
That quickens my senses in our wakingtime
And the rhythm that governs the repose of our sleepingtime,
the breathing in unison.
Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other
Who think the same thoughts without need of speech,
And babble the same speech without need of meaning ...
No peevish winter wind shall chill
No sullen tropic sun shall wither
The roses in the rose-garden which is ours and ours only
But this dedication is for others to read:
These are private words addressed to you in public. — T. S. Eliot

The guilt of not telling Frankie about Matt and me is overwhelming, but it's a pale second to the violation I feel that she read my most private, raw thoughts and destroyed them. She broke into my carefully guarded heart, stole the only remaining connection I had to Matt, and turned it into a monstrosity. — Sarah Ockler

You see these dictators up on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. They're afraid of words and thought ... They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words ... A state of society where men may not speak their mind - where children denounce their parents to the police - where a businessman or small shopkeeper ruins his competitor by telling tales about his private opinion. Such a state of society cannot long endure if it is continually in contact with the healthy outside world. — Winston Churchill

When you're struggling to survive, no one gets to label you a coward, not even you yourself in your private thoughts. — Sara Paretsky

The Word of God judges the thoughts. The word "judge" means to critique, to be or act as a critic. This is to say that Scripture is able to accurately audit a person's life and size it up for what it is. The Word of God is able to examine the unseen attitudes and motivations, expose the secret ambitions and desires, and then render the divine verdict. Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks upon the heart. This sharp, two-edged sword is able to penetrate into the hidden crevices of the heart and judge what only God can see. The Word makes known what we alone know about ourselves - and often what we do not yet know of ourselves. Scripture plunges deep into the unseen places of the human spirit and judges the private matters of the heart. Only the razor-sharp Word of God can do this. — Steven J. Lawson

Not only are we inescapably alone in the realms of our private thoughts, perceptions and feelings, but we are also, paradoxically, inescapably together in a world with others. — Stephen Batchelor

The talk of the educated, the talk in books, confused him, as if on purpose, as if education itself were a conspiracy to make certain that the knowledge of the world was unavailable to him. And yet he believed in his own intelligence, took pride in the way his thoughts came together like the cocking of a revolver. But the words were never there to express the thoughts, and so his private stock of knowledge was forever his secret, sealed inside by his ignorance. — Ernest Hebert

How one minute she was talking to you and the next she had slipped into a private world where she turned her thoughts over and over, digesting stuff most people would choke on. I wanted to say, Teach me how to do that. Teach me how to take all this in. — Sue Monk Kidd

Our thoughts are private to protect others not ourselves. People don't have the ability to handle what you really think about them — Morena Baloyi

Any human being has private thoughts. — Alan Dershowitz

Last night, in the evening darkness of the tent, he had pulled this gift from his packs and looked down at it, feeling its weight in his hands. Once or twice before, he had thought about this moment. In his most private thoughts, he'd imagined it happening with the two of them alone together. — C.S. Pacat

As for the prayers, I suppose they can't hurt. I've never found much good in them, I'll confess that here, though I keep such thoughts private when in public company. Who would confide in a physician who claimed no affiliation with God? I still must feed myself, and keep my house. I still need my patients. But too many people believe with too much conviction in what amounts to, at best, a superstition.
I've seen science change a patient's diagnosis, but I've never heard a prayer that changed God's mind about a damn thing.. — Cherie Priest

She turned you down because you are a simpering, pompous buffoon!" he muttered impatiently, feeling too angry at Mr Collins' words to rein in his private thoughts. — E. Bradshaw

I called up and said, 'Dad, I won a MacArthur.' My father goes: 'I always thought your sister would win that,' and I said, 'Dad, just say congratulations and keep your private thoughts private.' At that point he laughed, then burst into tears, and it was obvious that he was so happy and proud. — Bonnie Bassler

What man art thou that, thus bescreened in night,
So stumblest on my counsel?
*Who are you? Why do you hide in the darkness and listen to my private thoughts?* — William Shakespeare

The monologue of an isolated person who allows the threads of private thoughts to surface in letters and conversations, even in conversations with strangers. — Julia Blackburn

They sat in an awkward, embarrassed silence for a moment, the way Englishmen are apt to do after sharing private thoughts. — Daniel Silva

... my private thoughts, feelings I captured with a tortured mind and hammered into sentences I shoved into paragraphs, ideas I pinned together with punctuation marks that serve no function but to determine where one thought ends and another begins. — Tahereh Mafi

It is part of the trivialization of politics that we give endless attention to the inner life of the politician - his private thoughts, his inner demons - at the expense of his outer life. — Charles Krauthammer

Not for a moment did he consider keeping a journal. He would never allow anyone to read his private thoughts; therefore, he did not risk writing them down. "I'd rather take it to my grave," he said. And anyway, when was a journal ever honest? "It either tells a lot of truths to cover a single lie, " he said, "or a lot of lies to cover a single truth. — Michael Finkel

All my plans in private life; all my pursuits; all my designs, wishes, and thoughts, have this one great object in view: the overthrow of the ruffian Boroughmongers . If I write grammars; if I write on agriculture; if I sow, plant, or deal in seeds; whatever I do has first in view the destruction of those infamous tyrants. — William Cobbett

There was nowhere for her to go. Not in the kitchen, not in the hallway, not in the bedroom. What she wanted was a little room of her own where she could go and jot down small things in her diary. Tatiana had no little room of her own. As a result she had no diary. Diaries, as she understood them from books, were supposed to be full of personal writings and filled with private words. Well, in Tatiana's world there were no private words. All private thoughts you kept in your head as you lay down next to another person, even if that other person happened to be your sister. Leo Tolstoy, one of her favorite writers, wrote a diary of his life as a young boy, an adolescent, a young man. That diary was meant to be read by thousands of people. That wasn't the kind of diary Tatiana wanted to keep. She wanted to keep one in which she could write down Alexander's name and no one would read it. She wanted to have a room where she could say his name out loud and no one would hear it. Alexander. — Paullina Simons

I have a recurring fantasy that one more article has been added to the Bill of Rights: the right to free access to imagination. I have come to believe that genuine democracy cannot exist without the freedom to imagine and the right to use imaginative works without any restrictions. To have a whole life, one must have the possibility of publicly shaping and expressing private worlds, dreams, thoughts and desires, of constantly having access to a dialogue between the public and private worlds. How else do we know that we have existed, felt, desired, hated, feared? — Azar Nafisi

She had been amazed-and a little relieved-to discover that she was not concealing some private neurosis; almost all imaginative people heard voices. Not just thoughts but actual voices inside their heads, different personae, each as clearly defined as the voices on an old-time radio show. They came from the right side of the brain, the teacher explained-the side which is most commonly associated with visions of telepathy and that striking human ability to create images by drawing comparisons and making metaphors.
There are no such things as flying saucers. — Stephen King

My external sensations are no less private to myself than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it ... In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul, the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul. — T. S. Eliot

I think that everybody has a right to their own thoughts, their own feelings and their own private moments, if they want them. — Katherine Heigl

I have to live within my memories, within my private universe, and continually return to China, the land where my thoughts are locked. This is a very painful kind of existence, this feeling of nowhereness. — Ma Jian

We rode along in silence, thinking our private thoughts. Charlie and I had an unspoken agreement not to throw ourselves into speedy travel just after a meal. There were many hardships to our type of life and we took these small comforts as they came; I found they added up to something decent enough to carry on — Patrick DeWitt

Booksellers are the bartenders of the reading world. People share thoughts and interests they keep private from others in their lives. — Victor LaValle

Evil ... doesn't mean doing things that have bad consequences for people. It means private thoughts and actions that are not to "the Christian majority's" private liking. — Richard Dawkins

Each truth that a writer acquires is a lantern, which he turns full on what facts and thoughts lay already in his mind, and behold, all the mats and rubbish which had littered his garret become precious. Every trivial fact in his private biography becomes an illustration of this new principle, revisits the day, and delights all men by its piquancy and new charm. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Know that any and all thoughts that you have regarding your own skills, interests, and inclinations are valid. To reinforce the validity of your thoughts, keep them private. Tell yourself that they're between you and God. — Wayne Dyer

There are very few persons who would think of inquiring into the private life of the newspaper dealer at the corner, or the druggist, or the doctor, or even a Mah Jong partner, but the moment one belongs to the theatrical profession, the public usually feels cheated unless it knows one's inmost thoughts of love. — Marie Dressler

And he had no qualms whatsoever about prying into someone's private thoughts and experiences. And no guilt about hoarding his own. — Nora Roberts

so the knowledge of their presence remained, for the time being, strictly within the bounds of people's private thoughts, lying dormant in a corner of their minds like a secret language spoken only at home. — Orhan Pamuk

Your journey to capture her soul is one of patience and persistence as it lives in the hidden recess of her heart it is buried in her conscience and holds the key to her most private thoughts and hidden desires the journey is one of understanding and love, not any one can travel there as it is guarded by the heartbreaks of her past and hidden the sea of sorrow and regret.
- Richard M Knittle Jr. — Richard M. Knittle Jr.

The change is radical it gives us new natures, it makes us love what we hated and hate what we loved, it sets us in a new road; it makes our habits different, it makes our thoughts different, it makes us different in private, and different in public. — Charles Spurgeon

There's the physical world . . . but there's also our own private inner worlds, the world of our thoughts. A world made of ideas instead of stuff. It's just as real as our world, but it's inside. — Joe Hill

Books are portals for the imagination, whether one is reading or writing, and unless one is keeping a private journal, writing something that no one is likely to read is like trying to have a conversation when you're all alone. Readers extend and enhance the writer's created work, and they deepen the colors of it with their own imagination and life experiences. In a sense, there's a revision every time one's words are read by someone else, just as surely as there is whenever the writer edits. Nothing is finished or completely dead until both sides quit and it's no longer a part of anyone's thoughts. So it seems almost natural that a lifelong avid reader occasionally wants to construct a mindscape from scratch after wandering happily in those constructed by others. If writing is a collaborative communication between author and reader, then surely there's a time and a place other than writing reviews for readers to 'speak' in the human literary conversation. — P.J. O'Brien

A girl silly enough to leave her private thoughts displayed so blatantly in a plain notebook tucked snugly in the back of an undistinguished piece of furniture in the corner of an out-of-the-way parlor frequented only by her closest female companions deserved to have her privacy invaded. He continued to invade. — Katharine Ashe

Her eyes burrow into my forehead like greedy grubs that want to feed off my private thoughts. — Emlyn Chand

Nobody Beats Us! served as our main trigger ... We practiced using trigger words, private verbal keys, which unlocked certain thoughts for us. We had a half-dozen phrases-some dealt with maintaining our technique, two dealt with maintaining our technique, two dealt with our stroke rating. The most powerful phrase was 'Nobody Beats Us!' According to our plan, when I said these words to Paul toward the end of the race, we would immediately shift into our final sprint, rowing as high and hard as possible, straight through, until we crossed the finish line. — Brad Alan Lewis

In my work, I see couples who no longer wait for an invitation into their partner's interiority, but instead demand admittance, as if they are entitled to unrestricted access into the private thoughts of their loved ones — Esther Perel

But the test happens, whether we make it formal or not. We ask and you answer. We seek a human response. But more than that - you are my test, Elefsis. Every minute I fail and imagine in my private thoughts the process for deleting you from my body and running this place with a simple automation routine which would never cover itself with flowers. Every minute I pass it, and teach you something new instead. Every minute I fail and hide things from you. Every minute I pass and show you how close we can be, with your light passing into me in a lake out of time. So close there might be no difference at all between us. Our test never ends. — Catherynne M Valente

The malady of civilized man is his knowledge of death. The good artist, like the wise man, addresses himself to life and invests with his private vision the deeds and thoughts of men. The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small yes at the center of a vast no. — Gore Vidal

There is a fundamental similarity between the persecution of individuals who engage in consenting homosexual activity in private, or who ingest, inject, or smoke various substances that alter their feelings and thoughts and the traditional persecution of men for their religion ... What all of these persecutions have in common is that the victims are harassed by the majority not because they engage in overtly aggressive or destructive acts, ... but because their conduct or appearance offends a group intolerant to and threatened by human differences. — Thomas Szasz

This concern with the basic condition of freedom
the absence of physical constraint
is unquestionably necessary, but is not all that is necessary. It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison and yet not free
to be under no physical constraint and yet to be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national State, or of some private interest within the nation, want him to think, feel and act. — Aldous Huxley

Without private thoughts and actions, we can never truly be free. — John Twelve Hawks

Such nice people, the Hillingdons, though she's not really very easy to know, is she? I mean, she's always very pleasant and all that, but one never seems to get to know her better.'

Miss Marple agreed thoughtfully.

'One never knows what she is thinking.'
'Perhaps that is just as well.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'Oh nothing really, only that I've always had the feeling that perhaps her thoughts might be rather disconcerting. — Agatha Christie

The camera is more than a recorder, it's a microscope. It penetrates, it goes into people and you see their most private and concealed thoughts. — Elia Kazan

Many of my readers are women and some of them email me their thoughts about the stories I've written. Almost all of them find a delicious pleasure in being totally frightened by the strange and dark side of life. Perhaps it's because horror books are an escape from our sometimes-mundane lives? Or could it be that many of us actually do have a private darker side that we like to explore secretly through books, movies and music? — Sara Brooke

Lucien expected to find Horatia somewhere in the hall, but it was his mother who was lying in wait for him. She looked more dangerous than a cobra nestled in a basket.
"I should like a private word with you, Lucien."
Her tone did not bode well. It was too close to the one she used to lure him into a false sense of security before he was paddled as a child. He was well beyond his paddling years, but should his mother entertain such thoughts again he would most assuredly escape out the nearest window or door before she could get her hands on him.
He'd often wondered if perhaps there was some secret pamphlet that a mother received upon the birth of her first child that bore instructions on how to instill fear in one's child with only a look. If there was, his mother had been a quick study. Perhaps she had written the latest edition.

-His Wicked Seduction — Lauren Smith

To whom, then, must I dedicate my wonderful, surprising and interesting adventures? to whom dare I reveal my private opinion of my nearest relations? the secret thoughts of my dearest friends? my own hopes, fears, reflections and dislikes? Nobody! — Frances Burney

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader! — William Makepeace Thackeray

Life is better without the walls, everyone agrees. Still, sometimes I'm afraid of the outside world, and every so often in my private thoughts I wish the walls were still there to protect me. It feels like growing up, as if the safety of the childhood has been stripped away, and I've woken up on the edge of something dangerous. The walls are gone and I can do as I please. It's a freedom I'm not so sure I'm ready for. — Patrick Carman

For a writer, it seems a help rather than a hindrance to be at least a little crazy. Who but a crazy person would carve out a very private, quiet place in the world, only to pour his/her innermost thoughts and emotions onto a page for the entire world to examine? Even in fiction, we give a map to our most secret feelings. Why do writers do it? Perhaps because we'd be crazier still if we didn't. — Leland Dirks

For some people it's real therapy to talk to journalists about their private lives and inner thoughts. But I would rather keep something to myself. — Mick Jagger