A Quote by Emily Giffin

I've always been intrigued by the power of secrets. When is it justifiable to keep them from the ones we love? And does keeping them irrevocably change who we are? — © Emily Giffin
I've always been intrigued by the power of secrets. When is it justifiable to keep them from the ones we love? And does keeping them irrevocably change who we are?
Secrets have power. And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, because who can tell how many eyes might see them inscribed on paper, no matter how careful you might be with it. So it's really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours.
I'm good at keeping secrets. My friends always tell me their secrets because I keep them well.
Secrets have power, and that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them.
I have always been intrigued by the journals that girls keep. They are like dollhouses. Once you look inside them, the rest of the world seems very far away, even unbelievable. If only we had the power to keep outside ourselves at such moments, we would spare ourselves so much pain and fear. I'm not talking about truth or falsehood but about surviving.
The universe has its secrets. Extra dimensions of space might be one of them. If so, the universe has been hiding those dimensions, protecting them, keeping them coyly under wraps. From a casual glance, you would never suspect a thing.
Injustice and corruption will never be transformed by keeping them hidden, but only by bringing them out into the light and confronting them with the power of love.
I'm not really good at keeping my own secrets. I can keep other people's secrets pretty well. Unless they're really good and people deserve to hear them. And I'll disseminate the information accordingly.
Love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. Just keep being friendly to that person. Just keep loving them, and they can't stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they'll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That's love, you see. It is redemptive.
But it is important always to keep in mind that the danger of harming humans is not connected only or even mainly with telling secrets, there can be great danger in keeping secrets.
The thing to keep in mind is that laws are framed by those who happen to be in power and for the purpose of keeping them in power.
The tyrant, who in order to hold his power, suppresses every superiority, does away with good men, forbids education and light, controls every movement of the citizens and, keeping them under a perpetual servitude, wants them to grow accustomed to baseness and cowardice, has his spies everywhere to listen to what is said in the meetings, and spreads dissension and calumny among the citizens and impoverishes them, is obliged to make war in order to keep his subjects occupied and impose on them permanent need of a chief.
Trust, like love, is a word that has great power Everybody deserves their own space, in their own time. You are even entitled to keep secrets. But it is not secrets that destroys things, suspicion does. For it may take many years to build trust, sometimes.. all it takes is suspicion, you don't even need proof to destroy trust. So, if you say you can trust someone, you're admitting to something that is even greater than love. Trust, like love, is a word that has great power.
I have always thought that by observing things with a great deal of attention you eventually wrest some of their secrets from them, making them utter what they would most like to keep to themselves.
I feel like I've been lucky that I've never been put in a situation where I had to keep a serious secret. But what is true of me - and has to be true of everyone who's ever been in a family - is that our idealization of reality when we're children always has to fall apart. It's the narratives we didn't know about that pop up and redraw reality. You have to be able to integrate secrets into who you are. My family does not look now like it does when I was a kid. There was divorce. There were family secrets. There was definitely a difference between what I thought was true and what was true.
Fairy tales have always been about getting through the worst of everything, the darkest and the deepest and the bloodiest of events. They are about surviving, and what you look like when you emerge from the trial. The reason we keep telling fairy tales over and over, that we need to keep telling them, is that the trials change. So the stories change too, and the heroines and villains and magical objects, to keep them true. Fairy tales are the closets where the world keeps its skeletons.
Historically the great movements for human liberation have always been movements to change institutions and not to preserve them intact. It follows from what has been said that there have been movements to bring about a changed distribution of power to do - and power to think and to express thought is a power to do- so that there would be a more balanced, a more equal, even, and equitable system of human liberties.
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