Quotes About Secrecy

Above all, I have to maintain my air of confidence. No one must know that my heart and mind are constantly at war with each other.

He said life would have been much easier if he'd been a Christian or could become one after the war. I asked if he wanted to be baptized, but that wasn't what he meant either. He said he'd never be able to feel like a Christian, but that after the war he'd make sure nobody would know he was Jewish. I felt a momentary pang. It's such a shame he still has a touch of dishonesty in him.

Seriously, though, ten years after the war people would find it very amusing to read how we lived, what we ate and what we talked about as Jews in hiding. Although I tell you a great deal about our lives, you still know very little about us. How frightened the women are during air raids; last Sunday, for instance, when 350 British planes dropped 550 tons of bombs on IJmuiden, so that the houses trembled like blades of grass in the wind. Or how many epidemics are raging here.

He said life would have been much easier if he'd been a Christian or could become one after the war. I asked if he wanted to be baptized, but that wasn't what he meant either. He said he'd never be able to feel like a Christian, but that after the war he'd make sure nobody would know he was Jewish.

Can you tell me why people go to such lengths to hide their real selves? Or why I always behave very differently when I'm in the company of others? Why do people have so little trust in one another? I know there must be a reason, but sometimes I think it's horrible that you can't ever confide in anyone, not even those closest to you.

Es que la gente corriente no sabe lo que significa un libro para un escondido.

The strangest things happen to you when you're in hiding!

All these preparations require explanations to various people who we feel ought to be kept in the dark. Miep went to ask if Dr. Dussel couldn't manage to come on Saturday after all, but he said no, and now he's scheduled to arrive on Monday. I think it's odd that he doesn't jump at our proposal. If they pick him up on the street, it won't help either his records or his patients, so why the delay? If you ask me, it's stupid of Father to humor him.

Now that we've been in hiding for a little over a year, you know a great deal about our lives. Still, I can't possibly tell you everything, since it's all so different compared to ordinary times and ordinary people.

Samstag, 22. Januar 1944 (...) Kannst du mir vielleicht erzählen, wie es kommt, dass alle Menschen ihr Inneres so ängstlich verbergen? (...) Warum vertraut der eine dem anderen so wenig? Ich weiß, es wird einen Grund dafür geben, aber manchmal finde ich es sehr schlimm, dass man nirgends, selbst bei den Menschen, die einem am nächsten stehen, ein wenig Vertraulichkeit findet.

The whole game in the fifties and early sixties was for no one to know who you really were. We children were witness to the total pretense of how our parents wanted the world to see them. We helped them maintain this image, because if anyone outside the family could see who they really were deep down, the whole system, the ship of your family, might sink. We held our breath to give the ship buoyancy. We were little air tanks.

Rosie had to keep her room neat enough so James would not freak out, but not so neat that they could figure it all out, break the code, of who you truly were, what you were up to, your values, your truest parts. ... you were layer upon layer of ideas and erasures and new ideas and soul and images. [p. 68]

When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are. The secrecy, the obfuscation, the fact that these monsters can only be hinted at, gives us the sense that they must be very bad indeed. But when people let their monsters out for a little onstage interview, it turns out that we've all done or thought the same things, that this is our lot, our condition. We don't end up with a brand on our forehead. Instead we compare notes.

I have already told you, Mr. Monk, I have no idea where my brother is. Not that I would necessarily tell you if I did. Your wife is an excellent nurse. She has rare experience in certain areas that are useful to us, and if she chose to go with him, and has not informed you, then that is her own concern.

We'll hardly be in a position to discover much if they know you are married to a policeman!" she pointed out. "Let alone the very policeman who is investigating the murders. Added to which, it will do no harm for the general to see you as still unmarried.

What lurked beneath my fancy frills, behind my quiet unquestioning eyes? Who was I? Had I no remembrance of a warmer flame than that which gave its wintry glow to my faint smile at those who asked it of me? I remembered no one who had ever lived and breathed within my quietly moving form~ The Vampire Armand

We are never entirely sure about each other's powers. It's all a game. I would no more have asked him how he got here, or in what manner, than I would ask a mortal man how precisely he made love to his wife.

he didn't know where I lived, because I think he feared, in his heart of hearts, that I didn't trust him, that my work had slowly eroded the love for him which I felt. But I did trust him...I did love him. I didn't love anyone in the world but him. I just didn't want anyone to know where I lived.

I wish you hadn't told her. If you must know, I could have done without your telling her I commited statutory rape on the living room couch with her cousin. - Michael Curry

Armand keeps the island of Manhattan safe for them—Louis, Armand, and two young blood drinkers, Benjamin and Sybelle, and whoever else joins them in their palatial digs on the Upper East Side.

Once again, I had failed to keep the secret. Even in Antioch long ago, I had failed to keep the secret. Would I always fail to keep the secret? Was this not my fate?

I see that you are capable of secrecy but quite incapable of a lie.

But you covered yourself with a concealing bulk, didn't you? To hide from whom?

It was a lie to give him over to the daylight, to companionship other than my own.