Madonna Ciccone Quotes

If there are two things Penn & Teller stand for, it's the truth & lying, although not necessarily in that order.

I'm nothing more than what you actually see, but I am also the complete opposite.

From a distance it is something; and nearby it is nothing.

The plays I choose to work on are about having masks. We all have masks in life, but there is a different inner life going on. The audience has to work hard to see what is going on. I love what is not on display.

I'm a sponge. I'm obsessed with comedy. I'm obsessed with the idea that you can make somebody laugh, and I love to be around people who can make other people laugh.

Things are not what they appear to be: nor are they otherwise.

Performing comedy, you develop a rhythm of ideas and laughs. I live for it.

Sweetest nut hath sourest rind.

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!

Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath.

The depiction of the exterior as opposed [to] what you're feeling inside is always so different that it's impossible to know what is right.

The sweetest smiles hold the darkest secrets.

A mask tells us more than a face.

I'm always perversely attracted to characters that seem one thing, but are ultimately revealed as another...

Being a comedian is like being a con man. You have to make 'em like you before you can fool 'em.

Dark Error's other hidden side is truth.

In the essence of truth lies deceit.

Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.

To make people laugh was almost a sickness with me.

It takes a surprisingly large amount of intelligence to be a professional idiot.

I hate clowns. You can't see what they're thinking.

Most of our occupations are low comedy.... We must play our part duly, but as the part of a borrowed character. Of the mask and appearance we must not make a real essence, nor of what is foreign what is our very own.

Funny people don't really laugh very much.

I'm not great at fear. I made the least frightening vampire show ever on TV. I'm pretty much good at heroic narratives and making people laugh, and that's pretty much it.

..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.