Alfred Bester Quotes

I think that human beings, even the ones who are sometimes hurting you, are often very, very confused at their center. Even people who are doing things that are nefarious - it's often out of confusion. I know that it's tough to be a human whether you're good or bad. I'm acutely aware of that. If that comes through, then I'm really grateful.

We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,- - This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be otherwise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see thus, while We wear the mask. We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask!

All your friends think you're satisfied, but they can't see your soul, no, no, no.

I was an onion, layers and layers and layers under a thin, papery skin. If anyone had been able to cut me open, my bitter, irritating juices would have stung their eyes, and they would have cried. Although I couldn't cry myself, much at the time. But no one would cut me open.

Each of us, face to face with other men, is clothed with some sort of dignity, but we know only too well all the unspeakable things that go on in the heart.

So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds, And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.

Things are never simple when it comes to the human heart.

Men are much oftener thrown on their knees by the melancholy than by the agreeable passions.

I definitely have a dark side of me that can be pretty vicious... as we all do.

We've all got darkness inside us. And I've got quite a lot of darkness.

Scratch the surface of what's socially normal. I suppose in some way all of us have something we display to the public and things we feel too ashamed of or uncomfortable with to reveal to other people.

I believe that the truest parts of people can be buried, and for many different reasons.

I imagine that one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, that they will be forced to deal with pain.

We cannot see but a small depth into the heart of man, and can only discover the work of his tongue.

It is impossible not to notice that our world is tormented by failure, hate, guilt, and fear.

There are so many ways in which the heart of man conceals itself from man!

You never know what is going on in someone's head when they you think they are leading the perfect life.

Not always behind the scenes is it sunny.

I think it's always interesting to me how we keep secrets from the ones we love the most. You could be so close to someone, but still there was something you can't express, you can't tell them, because it's almost too painful and too hard for you to articulate yourself, because you don't fully understand it.

Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.

The sweetest smiles hold the darkest secrets.

What's often in your heart is the hardest to reach.

The point is... to live one's life in the full complexity of what one is, which is something much darker, more contradictory, more of a maelstrom of impulses and passions, of cruelty, ecstacy, and madness, than is apparent to the civilized being who glides on the surface and fits smoothly into the world.

I never feel the need to go out and make some grand statement that I'm dark and twisty and complicated, because I'm not that either. It's just not as simple as ponies and rainbows, though I do love ponies and rainbows.