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.
—Selena Kitt in Grace
O, what may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!
—William Shakespeare
Penetrate deeply into the secret existence of anyone about you, even of the man or woman whom you count happiest, and you will come upon things they spend all their efforts to hide. Fair as the exterior may be, if you go in, you will find bare places, heaps of rubbish that can never be taken away, cold hearths, desolate altars, and windows veiled with cobwebs.
—Myrtle Reed
He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.
—Raymond Chandler
A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
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
God is hiding in the world and our task is to let the divine emerge from our deeds.
—Abraham Joshua Heschel
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
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