Mary MacLane Quotes

All of us show many faces to the world. No one shows her true face all of the time. To do that would be dangerous, for what is seen can also be known.

Most lives are spent putting on and taking off masks.

We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.

I started thinking that if post modernism is about people opening up all their skeletons, I'm going the other way. I don't want anyone knowing anything about me anymore.

Be fond of the man who jests at his scars, if you like; but never believe he is being on the level with you.

We can never see who someone really is underneath the skin.

It was really tiring always pretending to be someone else. Not my life, not my real name, nothing.

It doesn't ever occur to you, as you fashion your mask so carefully, that it will grow into your skin and graft itself, come to seem irremovable.

The only people who make love all the time are liars.

It's a terrible thing to be alone - yes it is - it is - but don't lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath - as terrible as you like - but a mask.

I have a dreadful fear that the more you try to prevent revealing the self, the more you do.

Although I know it's unfair I reveal myself one mask at a time.

What once was an expression of who I was - acting - also became my hiding place.

A man may not always be what he appears to be, but what he appears to be is always a significant part of what he is.

God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

I think you have to be guarded but not closed off.

I am fascinated by that notion of people are never as they seem. And that doesn't make them good or bad. It's just we don't ever really show ourselves if we don't have to.

On the surface I look fragile and insecure; you have to know me very well.

I don't know any of us who are in relationships that are totally honest - it doesn't exist.

You'd have to spend a lot of time with me before I'd be comfortable enough to show my dark side.

Being is like pretending.

You have to put on more faces to pretend who you are.

It is hard for me to be vulnerable, because I never learned how to do that. I was never vulnerable in a safe way.

The difficult thing is that vulnerability is the first thing I look for in you and the last thing I'm willing to show you. In you, it's courage and daring. In me, it's weakness.

Everybody sees me as this sullen and insecure little thing. Those are just the sides of me that I feel it's necessary to show because no one else seems to be showing them.