quotations about secrets
That, my dear, is what makes a character interesting, their secrets.
KATE MORTON
The Forgotten Garden
A secret is powerful when it is empty. People often mention the "Masonic secret." What on earth is the Masonic secret? No one can tell. As long as it remains empty it can be filled up with every possible notion, and it has power.
UMBERTO ECO
The Paris Review, summer 2008
A secret's worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind
He's the quiet kind
Doesn't need a plan
Can't read his mind at all
He's a secret man
STEVE WINWOOD
"Secrets"
Two may keep counsel, putting one away.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Romeo and Juliet
Some men are tempted to violate secrecy from the uneasiness secrecy gives them, and others, merely to impress you with the extent of their confidence.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
Men with secrets tend to be drawn to each other, not because they want to share what they know but because they need the company of the like-minded, the fellow afflicted.
DON DELILLO
Libra
Something surely must be wrong
You're living secret lives
ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA
"Secret Lives"
Some secrets are too delicious not to share.
SUZANNE COLLINS
Mockingjay
We are bound by the secrets we share.
ZOE HELLER
What Was She Thinking?
Very few things will be secret anymore, and those things which are kept secret won't stay secret very long.... The real goal in security now is to retard the degradation of the half-lives of secrets.
JOEL BRENNER
attributed, "Our Transparent Future", Scientific American, March 2015
Never divulge secrets.
PERIANDER
attributed, Day's Collacon
I love the night
So many shadows
Unholy light
Secrets of the heart
Leave them in the dark
Forever
DIO
"Lord of the Last Day"
The trouble with a secret life is that it is very frequently a secret from the person who lives it and not at all a secret for the people he encounters. He encounters, because he must encounter, those people who see his secrecy before they see anything else, and who drag these secrets out of him; sometimes with the intention of using them against him, sometimes with more benevolent intent; but, whatever the intent, the moment is awful and the accumulating revelation is an unspeakable anguish.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
The more you leave out, the more you highlight what you leave in.
HENRY GREEN
interview, The Paris Review, summer 1958
Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
Old secrets are like old wounds; they fester.
PAUL CHRISTOPHER
The Lucifer Gospel
Secrets are a mortgage on friendships.
H. W. SHAW
attributed, Day's Collacon
I hear you in my sleep
I've fallen in too deep
Sometimes it's hard to keep
Secrets
AMERICA
"Whispering"
Never trade a secret, you'll always get the short end of the bargain.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
The Mission Song