When you have to hide who you really are to the world, you create a shell around yourself over time. A painted on coating of lies. It becomes your shield…and your prison.

I love you. And I love you enough to let you go, if I have to. If it's what will make you happy, I'm okay with that. Whatever you decide.

—Selena Kitt in Baumgartner Generations

They say love is blind but it's not. It's not blind, deaf, it's dumb. We still see and hear everything. We just don't ever say so. Love makes us forget who we are without the other person.

—Selena Kitt in Grace

Nothing stayed, nothing ever changed. But love, only love, that was the true part of the story, no matter what the beginning, middle or end.

—Selena Kitt in Grace

The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts, and would devour one another but for this protection.

—Henry Ward Beecher

If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn't spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say.

—Gail Honeyman in Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

God is hiding in the world and our task is to let the divine emerge from our deeds.

—Abraham Joshua Heschel

I'm not trying to hide my past. I've learned a lot from it. It's made me who I am today, and I'm proud of who I've become.

—Amber Lynn Natusch in Undertow

A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.

—Nathaniel Hawthorne