Becoming the Mask/Quotes

"If you have so many masks, what does your true face look like?" —Moon Child, The Legend of Zelda Majoras Mask

"Before you start, I have something to say: I came here as a patriot. I had a mission, and I carried it out. What I couldn't know is that I would come to care for the Earth and her people... That I'd come to care for all of you. I've spent the last five years torn between my feelings and my duty. I won't ask you to do the same." —Hawkgirl, Justice League

"You're Puss in Boots, the one who tricks the prince. He hides who he really is and pretends to be someone else forever. So in time he becomes that person, so his lie becomes the truth, see? He transcends the mask. Well, don't you get it? That's how he finds happiness. That's pretty good, right?" —Ninamori, FLCL

"My mask is growing heavy, but I've forgotten who's beneath." —Anberlin, Reclusion

"Shock of impact ran along my arm. Jet of warmth spattered on chest, like hot faucet. It was Kovacs who said "Mother" then, muffled under latex. It was Kovacs who closed his eyes. It was Rorschach who opened them again." —Rorschach, Watchmen

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." —Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

"A mask is just like a musical instrument--it reflects the character of its owner." —Windmill man, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Chicanery will always make you happy But we all know the hat is wearing me —Marilyn Manson, Dope Hat

"Reki freed herself from the curse of the sinbound by choosing a difficult path and by being kind to the weak. This began as an act, a mercenary attempt to gain salvation, yet over time it became her true nature." —Haibane Renmei

"You can't break a man the way you break a dog or a horse. The harder you beat a man the taller he stands. To break a man's will, to break his spirit, you have to break his mind. Men have this idea that they can fight with dignity, that there is a proper way to kill someone. It's absurd, it's an aesthetic. We need that idea to endure the bloody horror of murder. You must destroy this idea. Show them what a messy, terrible thing it is to kill a man... And show them that you relish in it. Shoot the wound, then execute the wounded. Burn them, take them in close combat, destroy any preconceptions as to what a man is and you become their personal monster. When they fear you, you become stronger, you become better. But let's never forget, it's a display, a posture, like a lion's roar or a gorilla thumping at its chest. If you lose yourself in the display, if you succumb to the horror, you become the monster, not more of a man, but less... and it can be fatal." —The Jackal, Far Cry 2

Ginny Usher didn't give a damn about Mesan goons - had even, if not perhaps to the same extent as Berry, managed to put her past life behind her. But she did care, and deeply, about the young man standing in their midst. And was probably wondering - as Thandi had sometimes wondered, about herself - how often a human being could assume a role before the role itself became the reality. Before a man, or a woman, became the golem of their own creation. —On Victor Cachat, Crown of Slaves

"I know that you weren't Eas. You're Setsuna." —Cure Peach, Fresh Pretty Cure

"He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it." —George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant

"When he became stuck in his morphed form, it could be interpreted that that's how he saw himself all the time: as a Ranger. He wasn't Tommy Oliver, he became the powers. It was all he was anymore." —Linkara, interpreting Tommy's character in Power Rangers Dino Thunder.

"Yes, it's me and I feel just like a...Smurf!" —Smurfette, The Smurfs

"My name is Saul Tigh and if I die today, then that's who I'll be." — Saul Tigh, Battlestar Galactica

"SO! You wish to learn the sacred art of the grapple from me, Los Tiburon? It would be my pleasure to pass along the ideals from my teachers and ancestors to another generation! ... Know this, my child, that when you wear the mask, who you were underneath is gone, and you must BECOME the mask! Let the mask give you strength, and give that strength to the mask itself!" —Los Tiburon, Shark of the Land, sup/tg/

"You've fooled them all into thinking that you are Caine; you've even fooled yourself." —Duncan Michaelson, Heroes Die

Miles: Why did you do it, Arde? You could have just surrendered peaceably. You're Betan, they'd have to have treated you all right.... Mayhew:Seems to me that dreadnought was about to blow you all into the next dimension Miles: True. So? Mayhew:So-well-it didn't seem to me a, a right and proper Armsman ought to be sitting on his ass while that was going on... Bothari: Welcome to my lords service-Armsman —The Warriors Apprentice

In any case, experience has taught us again and again that this automatism is far more powerful than the will of any individual; and should someone possess a more independent will, he must conceal it behind a ritually anonymous mask in order to have an opportunity to enter the power hierarchy at all. And when the individual finally gains a place there and tries to make his will felt within it, that automatism, with its enormous inertia, will triumph sooner or later, and either the individual will be ejected by the power structure like a foreign organism, or he will be compelled to resign his individuality gradually, once again blending with the automatism and becoming its servant, almost indistinguishable from those who preceded him and those who will follow. [...] The necessity of continually hiding behind and relating to ritual means that even the more enlightened members of the power structure are often obsessed with ideology. —Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless