Walls

"Most of us live behind a wall or smoke-screen which in some degree hides our true thoughts, feelings, beliefs, desires, likes and dislikes. But the question of self-disclosure goes deeper than mere willingness or reluctance. People often cannot disclose themselves, even if they would, because they do not know their real selves--what they really want, feel or believe."

---Scientific American magazine, May 2008. A reprint of an article published in May 1958.

New Skin

"Sometimes snakes can't slough. They can't burst their own skin. Then they go sick and die inside the old skin, and nobody ever sees the new pattern.
It needs a real desperate recklessness to burst your old skin at last. You simply don't care what happens to you, so long as you do get out. It also needs a real belief in the new skin. Otherwise you are likely never to make that effort. Then you gradually sicken and go rotten and die in the old skin."

---D.H. Lawrence