Secretive Quotes & Sayings

Wizards are a secretive lot. — Patricia Briggs

Anxiety is secretive. He does not trust anyone, not even his friends, Worry, Terror, Doubt and Panic ... He likes to visit me late at night when I am alone and exhausted. I have never slept with him, but he kissed me on the forehead once, and I had a headache for two years ... — J. Ruth Gendler

At the local coffee-shop, hunched in one of the secretive, high-backed booths with hundreds of peoples' names gouged into the wood, we drank cup after cup of black coffee and talked frankly about sex. — Sylvia Plath

He had never expected death to be this quiet, this secretive, this easy. — Anne Rice

Why did you envy? Why you go against me? When I got trendy, why you aint commend me? Why when I needed it, why you couldn't lend me? Why you was secretive frontin like you friendly? — Nicki Minaj

It was said that in the markets to the south of Taghaza salt was exchanged for its weight in gold, which was an exaggeration. The misconception comes from the West African style of silent barter noted by Herodotus and subsequently by many other Europeans. In the gold-producing regions of West Africa, a pile of gold would be set out, and a salt merchant would counter with a pile of salt, each side altering their piles until an agreement was reached. No words were exchanged during this process, which might take days. The salt merchants often arrived at night to adjust their piles and leave unseen. They were extremely secretive, not wanting to reveal the location of their deposits. From this it was reported in Europe that salt was exchanged in Africa for its weight in gold. But it is probable that the final agreed-upon two piles were never of equal weight. — Mark Kurlansky

I'm so secretive that when someone asks me, Hey, can you keep a secret? I say That's none of your business. — Demetri Martin

I really believe that a lawyer - no matter how good - if he or she is really worth their weight in salt, they will lose some cases because, after all, it is not really one of those secretive things that not everything is decided by who your lawyer is. — Floyd Abrams

You don't know me inside and out. You may have gotten in my skin, but you have never gotten inside my heart. Go ahead, Barrons, make me slice and dice myself. Go ahead, play games with me. Push me around. Lie to me. Bully me. Be your usual constant jackass self. Stalk around all broody and pissy and secretive, but you're wrong about me. There's something inside me you'd better be afraid of. And you can't touch my soul. You will never touch my soul! — Karen Marie Moning

In the dark places of yourself, thinking machines you never get near enough to see are constantly building things and running their own secretive programmes all of their own. Maybe you get a snippet of what's going on back there, like this fragment of a song drifting its way into the light, or a phrase, or an image, or maybe just a mood, a wash of content of a bleak draining of colour that floods your chest and your stomach more than it ever finds its way into the bight halogen chrome of your mind. — Steven Hall

Hoping like hell she was wrong about Dominic, and he was just a secretive man with a strange skin disorder. — Isabelle Rowan

I have friends who are writers, but we don't tend to talk about literature very much. It's just not part of my process; I tend to be pretty secretive about what I'm working on. — Donald Miller

The traditional gender ideals of the strong-silent man who plays his cards close to his chest and the mysterious woman who disguises her feelings with coyness go so far as to make a virtue of being unavailable and secretive. But wholehearted intimacy can develop only where two people are equally forthcoming and self-revelatory. To take the risk of loving, we must become vulnerable enough to test the radical proposition that knowledge of another and self-revelation will ultimately increase rather than decrease love. It is an awe-ful risk. — Sam Keen

Allowing ourselves to become a nation of silent, secretive, timid citizens is likely to result in a system of democracy and justice that is neither very democratic nor very just. — Dahlia Lithwick

I was anxious to deal with this shadow by myself alone -- and to this day I don't know why I was so jealous of sharing with any one the peculiar blackness of that experience. — Joseph Conrad

You're going to throw me naked into a pit and make me drench myself in baby lotion, aren't you?" Bride
You live in New Orleans, where they can't even dig a grave. So tell me where I'm going to find this pit?" Vane
"It's an above ground pit." Bride
"Hardly secretive." Vane
"But possible," Bride — Sherrilyn Kenyon

He gave me a small, secretive smile, a smile that said he knew many things but couldn't share them all at once. — David Benioff

Where I grew up, learning was a collective activity. But when I got to school and tried to share learning with other students that was called cheating. The curriculum sent the clear message to me that learning was a highly individualistic, almost secretive, endeavor. My working class experience ... was disparaged. — Henry Giroux

In the meantime, powerful industries and business investors spend considerable sums of money in secretive lobbying; persuading, cajoling and needling politicians to pursue policies that are, in effect, corporate welfare programmes. Corporations and banks receive huge public subsidies and bailouts, while the rest of us are largely left to the cold biting winds of 'market' economics. It's socialism for the rich, and capitalism for the rest of us. — David Cromwell

It is hard to imagine having a government more secretive than the United States. Virtually everything that government does, of any significance, is conducted behind an extreme wall of secrecy. The very few leaks that we've had over the last decade are basically the only ways that we've had to learn what our government is doing. — Glenn Greenwald

Our people believe in God, don't they? And they also do secretive acts, don't they? How can you keep a secret from God [the absolute supreme self within us] that knows all your actions? If you want to realize God, then you cannot do secret acts. — Dada Bhagwan

I am going to be on 'True Blood.' It was really exciting. I had a great time shooting it. I spent the last nine months shooting this season and it was very secretive, very sexy, a lot of blood and fangs. — Scott Foley

I contemplated the phone for some time. Never had I heard her so oddly gay and forthright; as a matter of fact, we hadn't discussed sex since adolescence. Her entire inner life was secretive and mysterious, and no one dared violate it. She sent out powerful "No Trespassing" signals and I had learned to honor them. It crossed my mind that my sister was drunk. — Brooke Hayward

Leopards are powerful and graceful animals that live on the continents of Africa and Asia. They are a member of the cat family, but they are nothing like your pet cat! Leopards are strong and dangerous hunters, just like lions and tigers. Out of all the cats it is the best at climbing and is the most secretive. What do Leopards Look Like? — Breanne Sartori

Every promise we kept, every squeeze of the hand, every secretive smile we exchanged, every crying child we comforted- every one of those moments narrowed the distance between us. — Nadia Hashimi

What destiny crap are you talking about?"
A secretive smile curved the corners of his lips. "There is so much you do not know."
Why I hadn't blasted the glittery fuck-face out the window yet was anyone's guess. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

After a few mouthfuls of moon-flavored air, even the stubbornly drowsy can find themselves wide-eyed.. All the normal noises of life were gone, leaving behind the secretive sounds, the shy sounds, the whispers and conversations of moss disputing with grass over some soft piece of earth, or the hummingbird snoring. — N.D. Wilson

I love sexy, intelligent women. Sexiness is hard to define. Of course a woman can be beautiful, but I think it's something in the eyes. It's a woman saying something secretive, something in her eyes that's almost animalistic. — Ellen Von Unwerth

People are secretive when they have secrets. — Deb Caletti

Growing up in Fitzgerald, I lived in an intense microcosm, where your neighbor knows what you're going to do even before you do, where you can recognize a family gene pool by the lift of an eyebrow, or the length of a neck, or a way of walking. What is said, what is left to the imagination, what is denied, withheld, exaggerated-all these secretive, inverted things informed my childhood. Writing the stories that I found in the box, I remember being particularly fascinated by secrets kept in order to protect someone from who you are. That protection, sharpest knife in the drawer, I absorbed as naturally as a southern accent. At that time, I was curious to hold up to the light glimpses of the family that I had so efficiently fled. We were remote-back behind nowhere-when I was growing up, but even so, enormous social change was about to crumble foundations. Who were we, way far South? "We're south of everywhere," my mother used to lament. — Frances Mayes

I think on 'ER,' my other long-running show, I had some ideas about what's going on. 'Stargate Universe,' they were kind of secretive too a little bit about what they wanted to do, but I kind of liked working this way. I like the surprises, and I like knowing just enough to work on the character. — Ming-Na Wen

He had spent much of his childhood perched on the coast, with the taste of salt in the air: this was a place of woodland and river, mysterious and secretive in a different way from St. Mawes, the little town with its long smuggling history, where colorful houses tumbled down to the beach. — Robert Galbraith

I argued for a Kindle but they pointed out that if it could be associated with me, then the information bleed - Amazon logging every page turn and annotation - was a potential security hazard. Not to mention the darker esoteric potential of spending too much time staring at a device controlled by a secretive billionaire in Seattle. The void stares also, and so on. — Charles Stross

Marvel is very secretive, so there was no script. About six months before production, they gave me some pages and it was from a cop movie. And then, six months later, I got a phone call saying, "Do you want to come do this?" [iron Man] — James Badge Dale

Vampires used to be the Dracula types, but in the last ten years most of them have become weak, brooding androgynes that only go after teenagers. A friend of mine took the opportunity to rid his whole city of them after the forth Mormon Vamps book hit and the sparkle meme was at its strongest."

"So does that make Ms. Mormon Sparkle Vamp a hero?"

"Of a sort. Before they started to sparkle, there were a lot of vamps who were tortured antiheroes, thanks to Rice and Whedon."

Ree grimaced. "Do you know if she was clued in?"

Eastwood shrugged. "She's very secretive, no one in the Underground has been able to say for sure. It's all rumor. My guess is she lost someone to a vampire and decided the greatest revenge she could inflict was to turn them into a laughing stock. — Michael R. Underwood

Washington's answer to a self-inflicted financial crisis reminded Americans why they so deeply distrust the political class. The 'fiscal cliff' process was secretive and sloppy, and the nation's so-called leadership lacked the political courage to address our root problems: joblessness and debt. — Ron Fournier

I've always been a pretty candid person. I'm not a very secretive person; I'm not a very discreet person. One of my best friends once described me as pathologically indiscreet. — Andrew Sullivan

On all the walls, wherever walls exist, I will inscribe this eternal indictment of Christianity
I have letters to make even blindmen see ... I call Christianity the single great curse, the single great innermost depravity, the single great instinct of revenge, for which no means is poisonous, secretive, subterranean, small enough
I call it mankind's single immortal blemish ... And we reckon time from the dies nefastus with which this calamity arose
following Christianity's first day!
Why not following its last day, instead?
Following today?
Transvaluation of all values! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Jackson's? He wasn't being deliberately evasive or trying to be secretive, it wasn't in his nature. — George Donald

There was Manderley, our Manderley, secretive and silent as it had always been, the gray stone shining in the moonlight of my dream ... — Daphne Du Maurier

Some of the qualities that go into making a good reporter - aggressiveness, a certain sneakiness, a secretive nature, nosiness, the ability to find out that which someone wants hidden, the inability to take 'no' with any sort of grace, a taste for gossip, rudeness, a fair disdain for what people will think of you and an occasional and calculated disregard for rules - are also qualities that go into making a very antisocial human being. — Linda Ellerbee

It's like he took the words right out of the deepest, most secretive part of my heart, the tiny room that's always locked up with the key swallowed for good measure. — Steph Campbell

Traditionally, sex has been a very private, secretive activity. Herein perhaps lies its powerful force for uniting people in a strong bond. As we make sex less secretive, we may rob it of its power to hold men and women together. — Thomas Szasz

There's been a coup, have you heard? It's the CIA coup. The CIA runs everything, they run the military. They're the ones who are over there lobbing missiles and bombs on countries ... And of course the CIA is every bit as secretive as the Federal Reserve ... And yet think of the harm they have done since they were established [after] World War II. They are a government unto themselves. They're in businesses, in drug businesses, they take out dictators ... We need to take out the CIA. — Ron Paul

Hitler was highly secretive - not least about his personal life, his background, and his family. — Ian Kershaw

Seriously, a smaller, leaner, cleaner, tuskless and more secretive elephant is exactly what is needed. It definitely would live longer. — Lyall Watson

As attunement to psychic (occult) reality has grown in America, one often misunderstood and secretive branch of it has begun to flourish also - magical religion ... — J. Gordon Melton

The car drives through, stops while the man closes and fastens the prickly gate behind it. The bell shuts off; the stillness is deafening by contrast. The car goes on until the outline of a house suddenly uptilts the searching headlight-beams, log-built, sprawling, resembling a hunting-lodge. But there's no friendliness to it. There is something ominous and forbidding about its look, so dark, so forgotten, so secretive-looking. The kind of a house that has a maw to swallow with - a one-way house, that you feel will never disgorge any living thing that enters it. Leprous in the moonlight festering on its roof. And the two round sworls of light played by the heads of the car against its side, intersecting, form a pear-shaped oval that resembles a gleaming skull. ("Jane Brown's Body") — Cornell Woolrich

I reject the notion that science is by its nature secretive. Its culture and ethos are, and for very good reason, collective, collaborative, and communicative. — Carl Sagan

You know, 'Mad Men' is notoriously secretive with its plotlines, even with exposing them to actors on the show. — Alison Brie

If kissing was a language I was sure we'd know it well. If it could measure the amount of love you felt for someone, our love was infinite after all. Even when we hugged I felt a special connection to him. It was in his loving embrace that I sought solace, where I found it, and where I would keep it. Our love was enchanting and magical, secretive and special. Overall, though, it was ours and we would treasure it. — Nadege Richards

We're [with Ilana Glazer] both totally upfront and proud feminists. We're not being all secretive about it. I feel like we're pretty blatant in our approach. — Ilana Glazer

Many friends have said to me, 'I never know when you write your books, because I've never seen you writing, or even seen you go away to write.' I must behave rather as dogs do when they retire with a bone; they depart in a secretive manner and you do not see them again for an odd half hour. They return self-consciously with mud on their noses. I do much the same. — Agatha Christie

Highly secretive, L'Occhio di Dio is an elite group of assassins with only one goal - the total destruction of all Prodigium.
"Well, that's nice," I murmured to myself. — Rachel Hawkins

Living with stress and secrets is both stressful and secretive. — James Dawson

It's so funny because if you tweet your lyrics and then you hear it in a song next week, you're like, 'Hey I had that same idea.' I'm very secretive with my music. We have to send emails password protected. Because once that song gets out, you aren't selling that thing. — Ester Dean

The Queen gave him a look: special and secretive and shared between the two of them.You warned her about us, the look seemed to say.That we would hurt her, break her as you might break a twig between your fingers. But you, who thought you could not be touched - you are the one who has been broken. — Cassandra Clare

He [Reed] had never overtly flirted with me; his way of showing me he cared was always subtle. Touching my hand. Meeting my eyes across a room. Playing my favorite songs when we were driving in his car. He was secretive about everything he did, including revealing emotion ... — Becca Fitzpatrick

Whenever people ask me what the story is for my next film, I won't tell and people feel it's because I'm being secretive or something, but it's actually because I'm ashamed to sum up a film in three sentences. — Abbas Kiarostami

The pope was lying fully stretched out on the floor, his body half-obscured by Cardinal Villot, who was leaning over him. Calvi's heart jumped into his throat. The pontiff 's eyes were shut, his face distorted in pain. He wasn't breathing. He was life-less, drained of color. — Peter J. Tanous

Well, they've come a long way. To think that he now could access a secret document held in the Vatican archives, via electronic technology. — Peter J. Tanous

Stephan was secretive and a liar, but he was a very gentle and expert lover. She was the petted, cherished child, the desired mistress, the worshipped, perfumed goddess. She was all these things to Stephan - or so he made her believe. — Jean Rhys

That is the operatic problem; the singer must keep up a big head of steam while trying to appear secretive, or seductive, or consumptive. Some ingenious composer should write an opera about a group of people who were condemned by a cruel god to scream all the time; it would be an instantaneous success, and a triumph of versimilitude. — Robertson Davies

In a small Swiss city sits an international organization so obscure and secretive ... Control of the institution, the Bank for International Settlements, lies with some of the world's most powerful and least visible men: the heads of 32 central banks, officials able to shift billions of dollars and alter the course of economies at the stroke of a pen. — Keith Bradsher

I'm not being secretive about anything. I just actually don't have opinions about society. — Tao Lin

I value my privacy, and if sometimes my actions seem strange or arbitrary or capricious, I do not want them challenged. — George R R Martin

There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There's something delightful about it, something naughty, secretive, forbidden, thrilling. It's like a spell, of sorts. It deflates them, reduces them to the common denominator where they can be dealt. — Margaret Atwood

it, something naughty, secretive, forbidden, thrilling. It's like a spell, of sorts. It deflates them, reduces them to the common denominator where they can be dealt with. — Margaret Atwood

What was that about?" Henry's voice came out higher than he would have liked.
"Shh." Peter's eyes shifted around the square.
"I thought you cared about her," Henry said, careful to steady his voice this time.
Peter rubbed his eyes and hen opened them, hoping to find that Henry had gone. He hadn't.
"I do care." Peter sighed, seeing that we would have to give a genuine answer, that Henry wouldn't take anything less. "But" - Peter nodded in the direction of the tavern, where the Captain was - "I'm trying to be smart about it. — Sarah Blakley-Cartwright

Toxically shamed people tend to become more and more stagnant as life goes on. They live in a guarded, secretive and defensive way. They try to be more than human (perfect and controlling) or less than human (losing interest in life or stagnated in some addictive behavior). — John Bradshaw

Some of them will welcome me as small boys do a teacher, telling me the little secrets better to conceal the big ones.For I tell you, that secrets are not kept by being secretive; — Talbot Mundy

Not the wretchedest man or woman but has a deep secretive mythology with which to wrestle with the material world and to overcome it and pass beyond it. Not the wretchedest human being but has his share in the creative energy that builds the world. We are all creators. We all create a mythological world of our own out of certain shapeless materials. — John Cowper Powys

First reason is, it's not authorized in the Constitution, it's an illegal institution. The second reason, it's an immoral institution, because we have delivered to a secretive body the privilege of creating money out of thin air; if you or I did it, we'd be called counterfeiters, so why have we legalized counterfeiting? But the economic reasons are overwhelming: the Federal Reserve is the creature that destroys value. — Ron Paul

Yet literal-mindedness is not honesty or fidelity to truth
far from it. For it is the whole experience of mankind that sexual life is always, and must always be, hidden by veils of varying degrees of opacity, if it is to be humanized into something beyond a mere animal function. What is inherently secretive, that is to say self-conscious and human, cannot be spoken of directly; the attempt leads only to crudity, not to truth. — Theodore Dalrymple

There had been no more attacks since those on Justin and Nearly Headless Nick, and Madam Pomfrey was pleased to report that the Mandrakes were becoming moody and secretive, meaning that they were fast leaving childhood. — J.K. Rowling

I love all of you Ember - the ferocious, beautiful girl I first laid eyes on, the fiery girl who punched me in the face when I threw off her sheets, the penitent girl I found curled up in the shower, the curious girl who questioned a wanted man's guilt, the brave girl who pushed me down when she saw a gun, and the secretive girl who thinks she needs to carry the world on her shoulders. — Laura Thalassa

Now I see how many wolf characteristics you had. You were wary, didn't really trust anyone or anything. You were elusive and secretive. You paced out behind the trees, watching everything and waiting for the moment when it was safe to come in and rest by the fire. But you weren't happy there -- no, I take that back, you were happy there, but you weren't comfortable. It wasn't what you knew. It wasn't what you trusted. You trusted meanness, not kindness. Kindness spooked you -- you were always looking for the trap in it. You trusted in a scrappy existence where you had to fight for your survival. — Helen Humphreys

The Occupy Wall Street protests are shining a national spotlight on the most powerful, dangerous and secretive economic and political force in America. — Bernie Sanders

When she went back to the telephone Hely's breath, on the other end, was ragged and secretive. — Donna Tartt

I was well aware how famously or infamously secretive these old institutions can be, no more than ourselves, a mixture of worry, lost power, perhaps even concern. That the truth may not always be desirable, that one thing leads to another thing, that facts not only lead forward to resolution, but backwards into the shadows, and sometimes into the various little hells we make for each other. — Sebastian Barry

A person may be very secretive and yet have no secrets. — Elbert Hubbard

Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air - moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh - felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing. — Tom Robbins

You are precious" I insisted. "Stubborn and secretive and independent to a fault, but precious. — Alyxandra Harvey

Quantitative easing is just the latest chapter in the Federal Reserve's hundred-year history of failure. ( ... ) The American people have suffered long enough under a monetary policy controlled by an unaccountable, secretive central bank. It is time to finally audit - and then end - the Fed. — Ron Paul

I'm not a secretive guy. I'm talkative. — David Lagercrantz

Smooth and ordered on the outside; roiling and chaotic and desperately secretive underneath, but not noticeably so, never noticeably so. — Caroline Knapp

I was beginning to agree with the thesis that some truths were better off dead.
And buried. — Simona Panova

He was secretive, bossy, and regularly insufferable. He had also saved my life a couple of times. And he looked really good in my kitchen. — Kalayna Price

Closed my eyes and diverted my mind from the awful sounds by thinking about language. I'd always thought of it as a friend. It's guided me through life and shown me new directions. Each new language I learned added to me. I became richer. But a language you don't know, sir, that is one mean, unfriendly son of a bitch. It's rude and secretive and it pushes you away, keeps you on the outside. And that's where I am now, on the outside. — Colin Cotterill

The alt-right's small gains in popularity will not be enough to win Trump the election. This is not Germany in the 1930s. All that's changed is that one of Alex's fans - one of those grumpy looking middle-aged men sitting in David Icke's audience - is now the Republican nominee. But if some disaster unfolds - if Hillary's health declines further, or she grows ever more off-puttingly secretive - and Trump gets elected, he could bring Alex and the others with him. The idea of Donald Trump and Alex Jones and Roger Stone and Stephen Bannon having power over us - that is terrifying. THE — Jon Ronson

I sometimes think I know you entirely," I said. "You know me better than anyone ever has," Susan said. "And yet you're quite secretive," I said. "You surprise me often. — Robert B. Parker

Why were my visitors so secretive, hiding themselves behind my consciousness. I could only conclude that they were using me and did not want me to know why ... What if they were dangerous? Then I was terribly dangerous because I was playing a role in acclimatizing people to them. — Whitley Strieber

He headed back for the door, and a smile so quick and secretive passed between him and Iko that Cinder almost missed it. Iko didn't take her gaze from him until he was gone. — Marissa Meyer

Being natural and matter-of-fact about nudity prevents your children from developing an attitude of shame or disgust about the human body. If parents are very secretive about their bodies and go to great lengths to prevent their children from ever seeing a buttock or breast, children will wonder what is so unusual, and even alarming, about human nudity. — Lee Salk

[Epilepsy] gave her an adversity to fight against. It had shaped her personality, the need to be careful and secretive, and the ability to see things a bit differently from the neurotypical. She granted that this feeling of having a broken brain that required her to be sensitive, to look always inward to survive, might be why she turned artist. — Thomm Quackenbush

A shade slinks over me and I'm caught off guard when he leans down, placing a blossom in my cleavage, his face shadowed and secretive. — Poppet

Carla might recognize herself in the lean girls against the bar, the girls in slender-cut suits with silver rings on each finger and thumb who looked so compact and secretive, so much as if all their essences were perfectly locked and kept, and only if you managed to please them could you unlock their fingers and pry them out. They smelled of a different perfume, they never quite met your eyes except in a swift and thorough appraisal whose conclusion you became aware of immediately when their eyes averted without the longed-for approving smile. You longed to go with them to secret apartments in the suburbs or condos on the lakeshore and there have their fingers brush down your back and have their maroon mouths kiss your thighs. — Dionne Brand

You're grumpy and broody and secretive all the time. You're no joy to live with, I can tell you that!"
"I smile sometimes. I even laughed about your ... hat."
"MacHalo," I corrected tightly. "It's a brilliant invention, and it means I don't need you or V'lane to keep my safe from Shades, and that, Jericho Barrons, is worth its weight in gold: not needing either of you for something! — Karen Marie Moning

I'm a very secretive person. — Jim Crace

The diamond business has always been secretive. — Nicky Oppenheimer