Selected privacy quotes

1. Our father the novelist; my husband the poet. He belongs to the ages - just don't catch him at breakfast. Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.

2. In my life, I don't need to have my face plastered everywhere. It's not really something I want.

3. Ephemeral work made outside, for and about a day, lies at the core of my art and its making must be kept private.

4. I like mainly to be invisible, to sort of drift around unseen in the world.

5. Please don't believe everything you hear about me, regardless of how true it may be.

6. One good thing about my computer: it never asks why.

7. Be a good neighbor, and leave me alone.

8. If I blow my nose, it gets written all over the world.

9. I handle fame by not being famous...I'm not famous to me.

10. I don't keep any close friends. I don't keep any secrets. I don't need friends. I just tell everybody everything, that's all.

11. I don't care! I don't have to show anybody my games just because they're a big shot!

12. I'm very, very blessed. But my safety, my privacy, and my respect are three things that I feel like are trying to be taken away from me right now. As a mother I have to speak up and say something. I have to speak up.

13. A security cam is one small part of a much larger universe of cams. The much larger effect, socially, politically and economically, is going to come from a much larger trend.

14. I do have two data identities. I have my name, Bruce Sterling, which is my public name under which I write novels. I also have my other name, which is my legal name under which I own property and vote.

15. I don't think there's much distinction between surveillance and media in general. Better media means better surveillance. Cams are everywhere.

16. Privacy under what circumstance? Privacy at home under what circumstances? You have more privacy if everyone's illiterate, but you wouldn't really call that privacy. That's ignorance.

17. You don't get to cut that chain of evidence and start over. You're always going to be pursued by your data shadow, which is forming from thousands and thousands of little leaks and tributaries of information.

18. I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood.

19. It's hard for me to show work while I'm writing, because other people's comments will influence what happens.

20. The fantastic advances in the field of electronic communication constitute a greater danger to the privacy of the individual.

21. In the biotech revolution, it is the human body, not iron or steel or plastic, that's at the source. Are the biocapitalists going to be allowed to dig without consent into our genetic codes, then market them?

22. We all have private ails. The troublemakers are they who need public cures for their private ails.

23. My show is my statement. What I have to say is on the screen. My life is my own. I don't want to talk about my private self. Why should I?

24. If your sexual fantasies were truly of interest to others, they would no longer be fantasies.

25. Selective ignorance, a cornerstone of child rearing. You don't put kids under surveillance: it might frighten you. Parents should sit tall in the saddle and look upon their troops with a noble and benevolent and extremely nearsighted gaze.

26. If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.

27. I had rather be on my farm than be emperor of the world.

28. I consider my selfbeing ... that taste of myself, of I and me above and in all things, which is more distinctive than the taste of ale or alum, more distinctive than the smell of walnutleaf or camphor, and is incommunicable by any means to another man.

29. There are only two occasions when Americans respect privacy, especially in Presidents. Those are prayer and fishing.

30. I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president.

31. It's not like I'm hanging out at shopping malls or going to celebrity golf tournaments. I'm so in my own little world. I got my dog, my music, my brother, a couple of friends.

32. Him, who incessantly laughs in the street, you may commonly hear grumbling in his closet.

33. Biography is one of the new terrors of death.

34. Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.

35. I had rather take my chance that some traitors will escape detection than spread abroad a spirit of general suspicion and distrust, which accepts rumor and gossip in place of undismayed and unintimidated inquiry.

36. Today, the degradation of the inner life is symbolized by the fact that the only place sacred from interruption is the private toilet.

37. It is the gossip columnist's business to write about what is none of his business.

38. Privacy was in sufficient danger before TV appeared, and TV has given it its death blow.

39. The closer and more confidential our relationship with someone, the less we are entitled to ask about what we are not voluntarily told.

40. If there's anything unsettling to the stomach, it's watching actors on television talk about their personal lives.

41. The sort of man who steps out of the shower to take a piss.

42. Reporter: 'Are you married?' Harrison: 'No, I'm George.'

43. The nicest thing is to open the newspapers and not to find yourself in them.

44. I cannot imagine any other country in the world where the opposition would seek, and the chief executive would allow, the dissemination of his most private and personal conversations with his staff, which, to be honest, do not exactly confer sainthood on anyone concerned.

45. Even crushed against his brother in the Tube the average Englishman pretends desperately that he is alone.

46. If you want to see a comic strip, you should see me in the shower.

47. The income tax has destroyed the concept of financial privacy. It has demolished the idea that a man's home is his castle. It has provided unlimited funding for politicians to wreck lives and property. It has forced one-earner families to become two-earner households -- leading to decreased parental supervision of children; loss of family values; and increased crime, promiscuity and drug use. So long as the government has the power to invade our lives, rummage through our records, and take what it wants from our income, we will have only as much freedom and take-home pay as the politicians condescend to let us have.

48. [I'm] an extremely private dude and all this is happening so damn quick. I really haven't had any time to rationalize it. But it's nothing that I'm going to let freak me out or take control of me or my thoughts or my real life.

49. Most of the time you don't even know they're there. Now, that's the scary thing. It's really strange and invading, but I'm still working it all out. I try to not let it bother me. And if I want to swim naked in my pool, I'm still going to do it. I certainly don't want to feel that I have to change everything in my life that I do to cater to them. I just won't let it happen.

50. I apologize for my terrible interview skills. I wasn't prepared to expose stories about something so special and wonderfully private that is happening in my life. I guess a part of me wishes that I'd never have to and that maybe I could protect this special time. I was dreaming.

51. Heath Ledger passed away this week, and in all the years we've been doing this show, we've never had cause to mention him. So, stop digging through the dirt, weasels. A talented, decent guy is gone and our thoughts go out to those who knew him.

52. The terrible fluidity of self-revelation.

53. You need not tell all the truth, unless to those who a right to know it all, but let all you tell be truth.

54. A man's house is his castle.

55. Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open?

56. Do not take up cause against the inaccuracies printed about you. They are your protection.

57. Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail.

58. What's it to you if I love you?

59. Ah, how often I've cursed those foolish pages, That showed my youthful sufferings to everyone! If Werther had been my brother, and I'd killed him, His sad ghost could hardly have persecuted me more.

60. Busy old fool, unruly Sun, Why dost thou thus, Through windows, and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?

61. I wish they had a delete button on LexisNexis.

62. Never tell your resolution beforehand.

63. It was a bad day. It was just feeling on display, feeling like a novelty, really. And it was being around people who only talked about the work and the money and you just think, Fuck you. Fuck you. And then you walk into this hotel you've never been at, that someone's booked you in, and you go, Blaaaagghh - I can't stand it anymore, man. I hate it! I would have been much better off in a barn with a bottle of wine and some hay. There was a part of me that was just like, Fuck it. I don't want to be stared at, I don't want to be poked at, I don't want to be prodded. You just want to live simply and not be fucked with. So it just mounted and mounted and I socked a vase or something. It felt good, felt right. It just seemed like the right thing to do, smash a couple of things. And it was. (2003)

64. More than anything, I love being with my family. I'm like a total homebody, just hanging out with my kids. (2004)

65. [Being in France] was amazing at first, because I didn't speak the language. I loved that, because I didn't have to talk. It was great just to be out among people and not have the responsibility to say anything. I wasn't thrown into the spotlight to be the novelty or to entertain. (2004)

66. If there's anything I really want, it's privacy. Maybe I should do what Brando did 30 years ago - buy an island. Maybe take my girl and some friends and just go there and sleep. And read, and swim and think clear thoughts. Because you really can't do that here. You can't be normal: you can't just hang out and have a cup of coffee and pick your nose. (1999)

67. I enjoyed acting and I loved the process, but at the same time I hated the celebrity that came with it even though I know it's part of the game and the recognition you need to have people come see your movies. I just couldn't get my head into the place where I could just enjoy the attention and deal with it on that level instead of feeling stalked and paranoid about it. I'm a lot cooler about it now. (2004)

68. The thing that fascinates me is: who cares what an actor thinks? [on his reluctance to give interviews] (2004)

69. e've always had our run-ins with the paparazzi. That hasn't changed. They are very ambitious. They're looking for God knows what. (2004)

70. when we're in a public place, like at some opening or a premiere, I don't mind the press. It's the nature of the beast. But when you're shopping for Christmas presents for your kids, I just don't understand the fascination. (2004)

71. it's ugly. I don't mind so much when [the paparazzi] do it to me, but when it's my kids, that's another story. It's evil. (2004)

72. I haven't changed my thinking about those guys very much! Even in France, I still have them staking me out and watching our house in the countryside. I don't see the point of guys earning their living by taking photos of me and Vanessa walking our kids to a playground. But I'm trying not to let myself get worked up about it anymore. That just makes them even more money and they know that so some of them try to provoke you that way. So I've stopped playing into their hands. I'm just trying to be a boring family guy so there's no value to taking my photo anymore. (2004)

73. What's very confusing for them is why there are people who want to take Mommy and Daddy's photograph. So we have a little game where we hide our face in Daddy's shoulder. When we get in the car and we've passed all the photographers, then we can bring our face out. They don't need to be exposed to the absurdity of that frenzy. Lily-Rose asks, 'Why do they want to take your picture?' My answer is always the same: 'I don't know.' Because I don't. (2004)

74. I'm shy, paranoid, whatever word you want to use. I hate fame. I've done everything I can to avoid it.

75. I don't care if they take my photograph. I don't care if they take Vanessa's photograph, we're adults. But when they start taking photos of my kids and putting them in their magazines, that I can't support. Just make sure that you're really far away because if I'm able to get my hands on you I'll swallow your nose. I'd bite your nose off and swallow it.

76. I love our house in the country. I can walk to the nearby village and have a coffee and no one pays any notice. I'm just another dad with my daughter on my knee. The time I've spent in France with Vanessa has solidified my belief that I can keep a major distance from Hollywood and still keep in the game. Acting is my living, but I don't want to live it. Living in France is the first time I can honestly say I feel at home.

77. I've never looked through a keyhole without finding someone was looking back.

78. Death will be a great relief. No more interviews.

79. I've never had paparazzi follow me and I rarely get recognised. I dress like a tramp when I'm not working. My hairdresser calls me the Romanian window cleaner. That's just the way I am.

80. Shit! Now where am I gonna bring chicks to fuck when my mom's home?

81. Now you've gotta spend two thousand bucks to stay at my house. And for five, I'll let you photograph my wife in the shower.

82. I have been placed under surveillance, and I can't take a step without it being known to the Polish minister of internal affairs.

83. So long as a man rides his hobbyhorse peaceably and quietly along the King's highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him - pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?

84. He had no living relatives anywhere capable of leaving him a fortune in a will. He owed no money. He had never stolen anything, never cheated anybody. Never fathered any children. He was on as few pieces of paper as it was possible for a human being to get. He was just about invisible.

85. The gap from our first meeting to living together was less than a year. He proposed, though I am too embarrassed to say how.

86. We spend so much time together, because that's how we like it. I never used to go on girl's nights out, even at school. And Paul has never liked going out for a night with the boys, either.

87. A man's thinking goes on within his consciousness in a seclusion in comparison with which any physical seclusion is an exhibition to public view.

88. True personalization is now upon us. It's not just a matter of selecting relish over mustard once. The post-information age is about acquaintance over time: machines' understanding individuals with the same degree of subtlety (or more than) we can expect from other human beings, including idiosyncrasies (like always wearing a blue-striped shirt) and totally random events, good and bad, in the unfolding narrative of our lives.

89. If man knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they'd never marry.

90. He wrote love stories, a thing I have always kept free from, holding the belief that the well-known and popular sentiment is not properly matter for publication, but something to be privately handled by the alienist and the florist.

91. Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no fibs.

92. When I like people immensely, I never tell their names to any one. It is like surrendering a part of them.

93. 'I want to know what the devil you mean by keeping coming into my private apartment, taking up space which I require for other purposes and interrupting me when I am chatting with my personal friends. Really one gets about as much privacy in this house as a strip-tease dancer.'

94. My favorite thing about the Internet is that you get to go into the private world of real creeps without having to smell them.

95. I've always been very zealous about not invading other people's private spaces.

96. When I started my public life, twelve years ago, I understood the media might be interested in what I did. I realized then their attention would inevitably focus on both our private and public lives. But I was not aware of how overwhelming that attention would become. Nor the extent to which it would affect both my public duties and my personal life, in a manner, that's been hard to bear. At the end of this year, when I've completed my diary of official engagements, I will be reducing the extent of the public life I've lead so far.

97. Call me Diana, not Princess Diana.

98. When asked, 'Should I tell my mother I'm gay?' I answer, 'Never tell your mother anything.'

99. It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.

100. Everybody lies about sex.