Can I Tell You A Secret Quotes

“Advice? I don't have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you're writing, you're a writer. Write like you're a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there's no chance for a pardon. Write like you're clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you've got just one last thing to say, like you're a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God's sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we're not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don't. Who knows, maybe you're one of the lucky ones who doesn't have to.”

— Alan W. Watts

“I will tell you a little secret about archaeologists, dear Reader. They all pretend t be very high-minded. They claim that their sole aim in excavation is to uncover the mysteries of the past and add to the store of human knowledge. They lie. What they really want is a spectacular discovery, so they can get their names in the newspapers and inspire envy and hatred in the hearts of their rivals.”

— Elizabeth Peters

“The best thing I can tell you about girls is that it is not so much how they see us, it is more how they see us seeing them. That is the secret, the essence.”

— Robert Black

“I'm sorry I'm so pathetic," he thought, and then realized he had also said it.
Beth laughed, so lightly and so kindly that Denis felt it in his chest, not his stomach.
Can I tell you a secret?"
Yes, tell me all your secrets Denis kept to himself.
Beth leaned in, whispered: "All boys are pathetic.”

— Larry Doyle

“No, I don't have to tell a soul about this, I promised myself. When you are a kid, you don't know yet that a secret, like an animal, can evolve. Like an animal, a secret can develop a self-preserving intelligence. Shaglike, mute and thick, a knowledge with a fur: your secret.”

— Karen Russell

“What is the best way to write? Each of us has to discover her own way by writing. Writing teaches writing. No one can tell you your own secret.”

— Gail Sher

“The man of my dreams is almost faded now. The one I have created in my mind. The sort of man each woman dreams of in her most secret and deepest part of her heart. I could almost see him now before me. What would I say to him if he were really here? Forgive me, I've never known this feeling. I've lived without it all my life. Is it any wonder that I fail to recognize it? You brought it to me for the first time. Is there any way I can tell you how my life has changed? Anyway at all, to let you know what sweetness you have given me? There's so much to say
and I can't find the words
except for these ... I love you. That is what I would say to him if he were really here.”

— Richard Matheson

“Yet I never sought what is real, yearned for the real, but rather I have yearned for dreams more than solid things. I can say I love the textures of dreams. The way they hover and almost taste. The clouds and darkness that linger behind, mostly unseen. And the palette of dreams. You can almost taste the colours, they seem as words on the tip of the tongue, unsayable as pomegranate seeds, unsayable as thick cream, the darkness of such a thick cream. This is why I am obsessed with dreams. They know what we cannot. Night after night they try and tell us the impossible. Dreams are secret and closed, and also contain everything, gushing, splayed open. Dream suitcases, carpetbags, hold-alls. They influence us secretly and they draw me to travel to nowhere, to beauty's passage, through halls of mirrors where I know I am not myself, I know I am sublime.”

— Shawna Lemay

“Don't be so concerned," he whispered. "We will get through this, I promise."
"What makes you so certain?" I couldn't help my skepticism.
"We have no other choice," he replied matter-of-factly.
"Is that really all you can come up with?" I scowled. "Couldn't you just lie and tell me you have some kind of secret badass weapon that is going to make this a piece of cake?”

— M.A. George

“You can easily tell when someone has been hit by a spear. he turns a deep shade of bitter. David never got hit. Gradually, he learned a very well-kept secret ...
One, never learn anything about the fashionable, easily mastered art of spear throwing. Two, stay out of the company of all spear throwers. And three, keep your mouth tightly closed.
In this way, spears will never touch you, even when they pierce your heart.”

— Gene Edwards

“Let me tell you a secret: there is no such thing as an uninteresting life
One day you must tell me your full and complete story, unabridged and unexpurgated.We will set aside some time for it, and meet. It's very important.
Maneck smiled. 'Why is it important?'
It's extremely important because it helps to remind yourself of who you are. Then you can go forward, without fear of losing yourself in this ever-changing world.”

— Rohinton Mistry

“I'll tell you a secret about storytelling. Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty ... were not perfect in the beginning. It's only a happy ending on the last page, right? If the princess had everything from the beginning, there wouldn't be a story. Anyone who is imperfect or incomplete can become the main character in the story.”

— Peach-Pit

“They can romanticize us so, mirrors, and that is their secret: what a subtle torture it would be to destroy all the mirrors in the world: where then could we look for reassurerance of our identities? I tell you, my dear, Narcissus was so egotist ... he was merely another of us who, in our unshatterable isolation, recognized, on seeing his reflection, the beautiful comrade, the only inseparatable love ... poor Narcissus, possibly the only human who was ever honest on this point.”

— Truman Capote

“Where did you go?' His voice drops just slightly and loses even the suggestion of a smile.
He's watching me like he's not sure he's allowed to ask question, and he's not even sure he wants the answer. I can almost see grandfather's word and josh's doubt about them swimming in his head. On every side of me are the lights and the tools and the wood and the boots and the boy I want to see forever. And if the my Sea of Tranquility were real, it would be this place, here, with him.
I don't say anything right away, because I just want one minute to look at his face before I gave him my last secret.
And then I tell him.
'Your garage.”

— Katja Millay

“So how does she know?
If you stay, I'll do whatever you want. I'll quit the band, go with you to New York. But if you need me to go away, I'll do that, too. Maybe coming back to your old life would just be too painful, maybe it'd be easier for you to erase us. And that would suck, but I'd do it. I can lose you like that if I don't lose you today. I'll let you go. If you stay.
That was my vow. And it's been my secret. My burden. My shame. That I asked her to stay. That she listened ...
I wasn't about to tell her about the promise I'd made. A promise that in the end, I was forced to keep.
But she knew.
No wonder she hates me.
In a weird way, it's a relief. I'm so tired of carrying this secret around. I'm so tired of feeling bad for making her live and feeling angry at her for living without me and feeling like a hypocrite for the whole mess.”

— Gayle Forman

“They're on Lee and Indy Sex Watch."
"Come again?"
"They want to know when we've done it."
Silence. I went on.
"If we don't do it soon, they might force us to at gunpoint."
"Christ."
"I know. No pressure though. I told them we're taking is slow."
"You have to report in?"
"I kind of feel obliged."
"How's that?"
I didn't want to tell him I'd recruited them both for Lee Maneuvres in the past, so I said, "Never mind."
"If something doesn't happen soon, it's gonna be bad. I can't keep focussed, all I can think of is what's on your Victoria's Secret credit statement.
"You need to keep focused," I told him, "bad guys are after me."
"Tell me about it.”

— Kristen Ashley

“Death is around everyone's corner, people try to run and hide from it, but it al-ways catches up with them. Like a bad scene from a horror movie. Death stalks you like a lion, waiting for just the right moment to attack. You can run but sooner or later you'll trip and death will devour you. Did anyone know the secret to outrun death? No one that lived to tell about it, that's saying something right?”

— Holly Hood

“I detected instantly that she didn't like me. It's a fact of life that a girl can tell in a flash if another girl likes her. Feely says that there is a broken telephone connection between men and women, and we can never know which of us rang off. With a boy you never know whether he's smitten or gagging, but with a girl you can tell in the first three seconds. Between girls there is a silent and unending flow of invisible signals, like the high frequency wireless messages between the shore and the ships at sea, and this secret flow of dots and dashes was signalling that Mary detesting me.”

— Alan Bradley

“Can I tell you a dirty secret?"
"Yes," she gasped. "Just hurry."
Derek's dark laughter increased her arousal, coating her in slick heat. Achingly slow, he sunk two thick fingers inside her. "If I could go back and do one thing differently that first night, I would taste your virgin pussy before I fucked you. I bet it would have been extra sweet.”

— Tessa Bailey

“Have we not, indeed, loved mankind, in so humbly recognizing their impotence, in so lovingly alleviating their burden and allowing their feeble nature even to sin, with our permission? Why have you come to interfere with us now? And why are you looking at me so silently and understandingly with your meek eyes? Be angry! I do not want your love, for I do not love you. And what can I hide from you? Do I not know with whom I am speaking? What I have to tell you is all known to you already, I can read it in your eyes. And is it for me to hide our secret from you? Perhaps you precisely want to hear it from my lips. Listen, then: we are not with you, but with him, that is our secret! For a long time now-eight centuries already-we have not been with you, but with him”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“K'Vruck is so much more complete than death. It is the reduction of matter to a state of utter inertness, from which nothing can ever rise again. It is less than nothing. Nothing is something. K'Vruck is absolute. Your species would postulate the loss of soul to try to wrap their puny brains around it.
I stiffen. I know this voice. This mockery. My spear will be no use against it. If I kill the Hunter, it would probably just hop a ride on me.
I will tell you a secret, it says silkily. You do go on. Humans. Unless you are-it laughs softly-K'Vrucked.”

— Karen Marie Moning

“As you can tell from the titles of my books, I like to probe secret organizations, secret subjects. And this sometimes gets me into trouble.”

— Ronald Kessler

“The real thing about evil," said the Witch at the doorway, "isn't any of what you said. You figure out one side of it - the human side, say - and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. It's like the old saw: What does a dragon in its shell look like? Well no one can ever tell, for as soon as you break the shell to see, the dragon is no longer in its shell. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is the nature of evil to be secret.”

— Gregory Maguire

“Brothers are not like sisters [ ... ] They don't call each other every week. They don't have secret worlds to share. Can you think of two brothers who are really, inseparably close? No, for brothers it's a different set of rules. Like it or not, we're held to the bare minimum. Will you be there for him if he needs you? Of course. Should you love him without question? Absolutely. But those are the easy things. Do you make him a large part of your life, an equal to a wife or a best friend? At the beginning, when you're kids, the answer is often yes. But when you get to high school, or older? Do you tell him everything? Do you let him know who you really are? The answer is usually no. Because all these other things get in the way. Girlfriends. Rebellion. Work.”

— David Levithan

“You can't find your true voice and peer behind the door and report honestly and clearly to us if your parents are reading over your shoulder. They are probably the ones who told you not to open that door in the first place. You can tell if you they're there because a small voice will say, 'Oh, whoops, don't say that, that's a secret,' or 'That's a bad work,' or 'Don't tell anyone you jack off. They'll all start doing it.' So you have to breathe or pray or do therapy to send them away. Write as if your parents are dead.”

— Anne Lamott

“And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell no man, for a secret that no one knows but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be.”

— Neil Gaiman

“Reveal not every secret you have to a friend, for how can you tell but that friend may hereafter become and enemy. And bring not all mischief you are able to upon an enemy, for he may one day become your friend.”

— Saadi سعدی

“It's a secret and if you tell a secret the secret comes alive and can never be kept safe at home again.”

— Catherynne M. Valente

“Miles smiled. "Can you keep a secret?"
Bea snorted. "Did I tell you what you were in for if you married my daughter?"
"No," Miles conceded.
"Well, then," she said, as if that settled the matter.”

— Richard Russo

“If you're 15 and you tell someone a secret, they can put it up on Facebook. If you make a mistake, someone films it on their mobile and puts it up on YouTube. When you're 15, you deserve privacy.”

— Patrick Ness

“There is a truth that everyone knows but you. Each of us has it; no one is immune. Not a secret, not a scandal, but something simple and obvious to everyone else. It can be as simple as losing weight, or as difficult as leaving a husband. How awful, to sense that everybody knows the thing that would change your life, and yet no one is friend enough to tell you! You are left to guess, all by yourself. Until that moment comes when it reveals itself to you, and of course this revelation always comes a moment too late.”

— Andrew Sean Greer

“Very soon she'll join all the others who know the secret and will not tell it. Or cannot. Or try and fail because they do not know enough. They can be recognized. White faces, dazed eyes, aimless gestures, high-pitched laughter. The way they walk and talk and scream or try to kill (themselves or you) if you laugh back at them. Yes, they've got to be watched. For the time comes when they try to kill, then disappear. But others are waiting to take their places, it's a long, long line. She's one of them. I too can wait-for the day when she is only a memory to be avoided, locked away, and like all memories a legend. Or a lie ...”

— Jean Rhys

“I HAVE A SECRET I CAN'T TELL NOR INK;
THOUGH IT HAS NO SCENT, IT DOES OFTEN STINK.
THOUGH IT MAKES NO SOUND, IT CAN MAKE YOU ROAR;
WHEN IT'S TASTELESS, I LIKE IT ALL THE MORE.
THOUGH IT HAS NO SHADE, IT LACKS NOT COLOR;
THOUGH IT HAS NO SHAPE, NO CAUSE FOR DOLOR.
IF YOU THINK YOU KNOW IT, YOU'RE INCORRECT,
AND FROM YOU THE SECRET I WILL PROTECT.
THE SECRET OF LIFE IS NOT STONE NOR CENTS,
FOR THE SECRET SENSE IS BUT A NONSENSE.”

— Pseudonymous Bosch

“If you want to tell me. You don't have to. We all have secrets.""I chased away the most amazing girl I have ever met, because I'm too much of a loser to manage being myself. That's my secret: I want to be a hero, but I'm not one. Everybody thinks I'm some amazing warrior who summoned angels and rescued Shadowhunters and saved the world, but it's a joke. I can't even remember what I did. I can't imagine how I did it. I'm no one special, and no one's going to be fooled for long, and I don't even know what I'm doing here. So. You have a secret that can beat that?”

— Cassandra Clare

“He will give his angels charge of you to guard you in all your ways. PSALM 91:11 RSV A secret agent is one who seeks to protect his country, his king, or his president against evil forces that are opposed to the one he serves. The American Secret Service is charged with protecting the president of the United States. They do an excellent job, but even they will tell you that someone who is fiercely determined to assassinate the president could be successful. God has His own secret agents-the angels. Unseen and unrecognized by the world, they never fail in their appointed tasks. Much has been written recently about angels-often not based on the Bible but on popular legends. But angels are real, and God has commanded them to watch over us. Only in eternity will we know how many accidents they prevented or how often they kept Satan's malicious spirits at bay. In the meantime, we can take comfort in their presence and thank God for the love He expresses for us through their service.”

— Billy Graham

“Well, I really don't know what the secret of success is but I can tell you that the secret of failure is to try to please everyone.”

— Bill Cosby

“There are many who want me to tell them of secret ways of becoming perfect and I can only tell them that the sole secret is a hearty love of God, and the only way of attaining that love is by loving. You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so you learn to love God and man by loving. Begin as a mere apprentice and the very power of love will lead you on to become a master of the art.”

— Saint Francis De Sales

“I can only tell you one thing that I do know for sure, I am a dreamer. There are not many people that will recognize or want to recognize the fact that they are dreamers in their own life ... I continue to get up in the morning,enthusiastically, and go pick up a golf club with a thought that I can somewhere find that secret to making the cut. That's just an example, but it applies to other things in life, too, and that's the way I live and the way I think and the way I feel.”

— Arnold Palmer

“If you have a secret and tell someone everyone will know. You can only keep a secret if you don't tell anyone.”

— Benjamin Franklin