Quotes About Privacy

Why does one's best writing require secrecy, silence, and darkness?

It is surprising how well one writes if one thinks no one will read.

One of my notes says: "Correct Anaïs' English." Do you want me to do that, or would Hugo consider that I am encroaching on his private domain?

Their own life together was like a subtle watercolor sketch, invisible to other people. They gave the world what it required of them and for the rest of the time were content to be forgotten.

Especially, [the skin] is both identity and sex, what one is and what one feels in the realm of the sensual, [...] where the self meets the world-intercourse being, ultimately, the self in the act of meeting the world. The other person embodies not one's own privacy, but everything outside it.

Tyranny begins when one power, one church, one party introduces itself into the private life of its citizens.

Whatever anybody else thinks of you is none of your business.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee.'—Matt. vi. 6.

Everything is more glamorous when you do it in bed anyway.

A: I like your apartment. B: It's nice, but it's only big enough for one person – or two people who are very close. A: You know two people who are very close?

Sometimes it is a relief to be invisible

Not even you can reach me here, Carmen thought.

She wasn't comfortable with the term boyfriend even when she did have one, and she hated everybody knowing her private business.

If, for whatever wild reason, I ever wind up as a celebrity, don't let Mary Anne near me.

So they found out all these exciting things about me, like: I drove an old pickup truck with cages in the back for my bird dogs, or I wore a Wal-Mart ball cap, or I got my hair cut at the barbershop just off the town square—somebody with a telephoto lens even snuck up and took a picture of me in the barber chair, and it was in newspapers all over the country.

It made me mad, anyway, that all they wanted to talk about was my family's personal finances. They weren't even interested in Wal-Mart, which was probably one of the best business stories going on anywhere in the world at the time, but it never even occurred to them to ask about the company.

Miss Grandison has just now told her sister what passed between us. Lady L. says, she would not have been Miss Grandison, in taking the letter, by what means soever come at; for how, said she, did I know what secrets there might be in it, before I read it? But I think verily, when it had been got at, and offered me, I could not have been Miss Byron.

Dean Malloy eased himself off the bed. Groping in darkness, he located his underwear on the floor and took it with him into the bathroom. As quietly as he could, he closed the door before switching on the light

While basking in the limelight, one sacrificed privacy. Anonymity has distinct advantages. Keeping to the background afforded one much more maneuverability and, thereby, power.

gave him a look. Okay. Only to himself

Most of them don't even mind being surveilled anymore if they think it keeps them safe, and women's rights are always the first thing to go backward in a crisis.

In seventy years, I've never told a blessed soul.

I m not about to tell him that I am just like Anna and Emma, an adulteress. My books are my secret lovers, the friends I run to to get away from the daily drudgeries of life, to try out something new, and yes, to get away, for a few hours, from him. He doesn't need to know that my books are the affairs I don't have.

Don't ask me how I am,' I blurt. 'Please.' I want to keep feeling good. Just because the lights are on doesn't mean I have to look.