The world, in truth, is a wedding.

Choose your self-presentations carefully, for what starts out as a mask may become your face.

The self... is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented.

The normal and the stigmatized are not persons, but perspectives.

All the world is not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it isn’t are not easy to specify

Stigma is a process by which the reaction of others spoils normal identity.

Society is organized on the principle that any individual who possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect that others will value and treat him in an appropriate way.

Society is an insane asylum ran by the inmates.

Any group of persons – prisoners, primitives, pilots, or patients – develop a life of their own that becomes meaningful, reasonable and normal once you get close to it.

Approved attributes and their relation to face make every man his own jailer; this is a fundamental social constraint even though each man may like his cell.

There seems to be no agent more effective than another person in bringing a world for oneself alive, or, by a glance, a gesture, or a remark, shriveling up the reality in which one is lodged.

We all come and go. This universe is staying here with endless joy of welcoming and an infinite sadness of farewell.

I wouldn't describe that "position" as "parasitic." I'd describe that experience as "edifying." I don't merely write from a critical intellectual distance. I actually live around here.

God loves you as though you are the only person in the world, and He loves everyone the way He loves you.

The key to our transformation is simply this: the better we know ourselves the better equipped we will be to make our choices wisely.

My dissatisfaction with acting has nothing to do with being uncomfortable or vulnerable or feeling like people are going to criticize me. That's not the problem.

My father was a man of few words.

Magnetizing things to ourselves is a natural process, but what are we magnetizing towards ourselves, is what we're giving out.

Remember: once you have ascertained that you are dealing with hostile intruders, the staircase becomes a free-fire zone.

We recognize the action of God in great things: we exclude it in small. We forget that the Lord of eternity is also the Lord of the hour.

Certain types of films will never test well. My films never seem to test well.