Mask Quotes - Page 18

• Most people stiffen with self-consciousness when they pose for a photograph. Lighting and fine camera equipment are useless if the photographer cannot make them drop the mask, at least for a moment, so he can capture on his film their real, undistorted personality and character.

  Philippe Halsman

  Real, Character, Self

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• The theater, bringing impersonal masks to life, is only for those who are virile enough to create new life: either as a conflict of passions subtler than those we already know, or as a complete new character.

  Alfred Jarry

  Passion, Character, Theatre

  Alfred Jarry, Roger Shattuck, Simon Watson Taylor (1965). “Selected works: Edited by Roger Shattuck and Simon Watson Taylor”

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• The world is changing from day to day; it is high time for our writers to take off their masks, look frankly, keenly, and boldly at life, and write about real flesh and blood. It is high time for a brand-new arena for literature, high time for some bold fighters to charge headlong into battle!

  Lu Xun

  Real, Writing, Blood

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• I'm not interested in saying what people should and shouldn't do. It depends on how people feel about themselves. I suppose personally if you do anything out of fear or to mask who you are, then that's a bit scary. You've got to work with what you got.

  Cate Blanchett

  People, Scary, Should

  "Yes, Cate Blanchett's Skin Really Does Glow (and Other Important Beauty Bits We Gleaned From the Blue Jasmine Star)". Interview with Lindsey Unterberger, www.glamour.com. November 25, 2013.

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• To our real, naked selves there is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for. It is only when we see ourselves as actors in a staged (and therefore unreal) performance that death loses its frightfulness and finality and becomes an act of make-believe and a theatrical gesture. It is one of the main tasks of a real leader to mask the grim reality of dying and killing by evoking in his followers the illusion that they are participating in a grandiose spectacle, a solemn or lighthearted dramatic performance.

  Eric Hoffer

  Real, Believe, Self

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris.

  Mason Cooley

  New York, Paris, Drawing

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• When applied to politics and taken to its extreme, kitsch is the mask of death. Fascism was all aesthetics. There was no core principle to it. There was no truth to it.

  John Cusack

  Taken, Principles, Kitsch

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• Human relationships didn't work anyhow. Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest. Masks dropped away and real people began to appear: cranks, imbeciles, the demented, the vengeful, sadists, killers. Modern society had created its own kind and they feasted on each other. It was a duel to the death--in a cesspool.

  Charles Bukowski

  Real, Two, People

  Charles Bukowski (1978). “Women”

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• A capacity for inferiority in the growing adult is threatened by the temptation by squander that capacity ruthlessly, to revel in hallowness. The syndrom especially plaques anyone who lives behind a mask. An elephant in her disquise as a human princess, a scarecrow with painted features, a glittering tiara under which to glow and glide in anonymous glamour. A witch's hat, a wizards stole, a scholars gown, a soldiers dress sartorials. A hundred ways to duck the question: how will I live with myself now that I nkow what I know.

  Gregory Maguire

  Princess, Elephants, Ducks

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• Evey Hammond: Who are you? V: Who? Who is but the form following the function of what and what I am is a man in a mask. Evey Hammond: Well I can see that. V: Of course you can. I'm not questioning your powers of observation I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is

  Alan Moore

  Men, Asking, Paradox

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• I think it's interesting that there's always a dark cloud hanging over my character, in every movie. Even in Fat Man and Little Boy, where it's a real dark cloud. In Mask, it's more the judgment of others, but it's still a threat.

  Laura Dern

  Real, Character, Dark

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• Beneath a mask of selfish tranquility nothing exists except bitterness and boredom. I am one of those whom suffering has made empty and frivolous: each night in my dreams I pull the scab off a wound; each day, vacuous and habit-ridden, I help it re-form.

  Cyril Connolly

  Dream, Selfish, Night

  "The Unquiet Grave". Book by Cyril Connolly, 1944.

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• I guess this is what marriage is, or was, or could be. You drop the mask. You allow the fatigue in. You lean across and kiss the years because they're the things that matter.

  Colum McCann

  Kissing, Years, Matter

  Colum McCann (2009). “Let the Great World Spin: A Novel”, p.319, Random House

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• Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--- Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--- No---yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever---or else swoon in death.

  John Keats

  Sweet, Art, Stars

  'Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art' (1819)

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• I'd thought once, actually, of taking your mind, if you asked. I'd thought I could help you fall asleep at night." He opened his mouth to say something. Shut it again. His face closed for a moment, his unreadable mask falling into place. He spoke softly. "But that wouldn't be fair; for after I slept you'd be left awake, with no one to help you sleep.

  Kristin Cashore

  Fall, Sleep, Night

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• Boredom is a mask frustration wears.

  Neal Stephenson

  Frustration, Boredom

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• Chaos comes before all principles of order & entropy, it's neither a god nor a maggot, its idiotic desires encompass & define every possible choreography, all meaningless aethers & phlogistons: its masks are crystallizations of its own facelessness, like clouds.

  Hakim Bey

  Clouds, Order, Desire

  Hakim Bey (2003). “T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism”, p.3, Autonomedia

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• Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull.

  Salman Rushdie

  Honesty, Skulls

  Salman Rushdie (1989). “The Satanic Verses”, New York, N.Y. : Viking

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• Perfume was first created to mask the stench of foul and offensive odors... Spices and bold flavorings were created to mask the taste of putrid and rotting meat... What then was music created for? Was it to drown out the voices of others, or the voices within ourselves? I think I know.

  Emilie Autumn

  Music, Thinking, Voice

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• If Jacob was right and clothes were costumes and makeup a mask, then our attitudes and habits must be our shields.

  Justina Chen

  Attitude, Makeup, Clothes

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• See?" Fezzik pointed then. Far down, at the very bottom of the mountain path, the man in black could be seen running. "Inigo is beaten." Inconceivable!" exploded the Sicilian. Fezzik never dared disagree with the hunchback. "I'm so stupid," Fezzik nodded. "Inigo has not lost to the man in black, he has defeated him. And to prove it he has put on all the man in black's clothes and masks and hoods and boots and gained eighty pounds.

  William Goldman

  Running, Stupid, Men

  William Goldman (2013). “The Princess Bride”, p.100, A&C Black

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• I rarely do masks because, if I have any extra time, I'd rather spend it with my friends than on myself.

  Eva Herzigova

  Extra Time, Extras, My Friends

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• Life offers its wisdom generously. Everything teaches. Not everyone learns. Life asks of us the same thing we have been asked in every class: "Stay awake." "Pay attention." But paying attention is no simple matter. It requires us not to be distracted by expectations, past experiences, labels, and masks. It asks that we not jump to early conclusions and that we remain open to surprise.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Past, Simple, Class

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• When I'm writing, I try to have the mask of my character on as I'm walking through the world. When I'm not at my desk, the rest of the time, I try to stay in that character and see the world the way that character would It's almost like method acting in a way — keeping the character close the way the actor keeps a script close and always tries to be in character.

  Stewart O'Nan

  Writing, Character, Trying

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• It can sometimes be a hearbreaking struggle for us to arrive at a place where we are no longer afraid of the child inside us. We often fear that people won't take us seriously, or that they won't think us qualified enough. For the sake of being accepted, we can forget our source and put on one of the rigid masks of professionalism or conformity that society is continually offering us. The childlike part of us is the part that, like the Fool, simply does and says, without needing to qualify himself or strut his credentials.

  Stephen Nachmanovitch

  Children, Struggle, Thinking

  Stephen Nachmanovitch (1991). “Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art”, p.50, Penguin

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