J G Ballard - Lauren Bacall - Joseph Conrad - Face/Off 1997 - Christopher Marlowe - Groucho Marx - W H Auden - William Blake - Alan Jay Lerner - George Orwell - Alexander Pope - Henry IV 2012 & William Shakespeare - Frank Sinatra - P G Wodehouse - J D Salinger - Oscar Wilde - Charles Dickens - Voltaire - Edmund Yates - Proverbs - Thomas Hardy - The War of the Roses 1989 - Faces Places 2017 - Ellie Undercover TV - Killing Eve 2018 - Dark Net 2017 - The Ten Faces of Michael Jackson TV - Second Thought online -
I wanted to rub the human face in its own vomit and force it to look in the mirror. J G Ballard, on writing Crash, cited Miers & Sharko
I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that. Lauren Bacall, Daily Telegraph 2nd March 1988
Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through – face it. Joseph Conrad
I want to take his face off. Face/Off 1997 starring John Travolta & Nicolas Cage & Joan Allen & Alessandro Nivola & Gina Gershon & Dominique Swaine & Nick Cassavetes & Harve Presnell & Colm Feore et al, director John Woo, Travolta as Cage
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ileum? Christopher Marlowe
I never forget a face. But in your case I’ll be glad to make an exception. Groucho Marx
My face looks like a wedding cake left out in the rain. W H Auden
O why was I born with a different face?
Why was I not born like the rest of my race? William Blake, letter to Thomas Butts 16th August 1803
I’ve grown accustomed to the trace
Of something in the air;
Accustomed to her face. Alan Jay Lerner, song 1956
At fifty, everyone has the face he deserves. George Orwell, last words in notebook 17th April 1949
Always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever. George Orwell, 1984
If to her share some female errors fall,
Look on her face, and you’ll forget ’em all. Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock, 1714
Fair tresses man’s imperial race insnare,
And beauty draws us with a single hair. ibid.
Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay. ibid.
Whether the nymph shall break Diana’s law,
Or some frail china jar receive a flaw,
Or stain her honour, or her new brocade,
Forget her pray’rs , or miss a masquerade. ibid.
Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll;
Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul. ibid.
His face is Lucifer’s privy kitchen. William Shakespeare, Henry IV II, Falstaff, Globe Theatre, Sky Arts 2012
A countenance more in sorrow than in anger. William Shakespeare, Hamlet I ii 231
God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another. ibid. III i
Take, O take those lips away,
That so sweetly were forsworn;
And those eyes, the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the morn. William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure IV i 1
Sir, ’tis my occupation to be plain:
I have seen better faces in my time
Than stands on any shoulder that I see
Before me at this instant. William Shakespeare, The History of King Lear II ii 88-91, Kent
There’s no art
To find the mind’s construction in the face. William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Macbeth I Iv 11-12, Duncan
Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters. To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under’t. ibid. I v, Lady Macbeth
False face must hide what the false heart doth know. ibid. I vii 82, Macbeth
And make our faces visors to our hearts. ibid. III iii 35, Macbeth
Dare to wear the foolish clown face. Frank Sinatra
He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom. P G Wodehouse
She was not one for emptying her face of expression. J D Salinger, Franny and Zooey
A mask tells us more than a face. Oscar Wilde
A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction. Oscar Wilde
Alas! How few of Nature’s faces are left alone to gladden us with their beauty! The cares, and sorrows, and the hungerings, of the world, change them as they change hearts; and it is only when those passions sleep, and have lost their hold for ever, that the troubled clouds pass off, and leave Heaven’s surface clear. It is a common thing for the countenances of the dead, even in that fixed and rigid state, to subside into the long-forgotten expression of sleeping infancy, and settle into the very look of early life; so calm, so peaceful, do they grow again, that those who knew them in their happy childhood, kneel by the coffin’s side in awe, and see the Angel even upon earth. Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
His face bespoke his soul. Voltaire
My face. Is this long strip of skin
Which bears of worry many a trace,
Of sallow hue, of features thin,
This mass of seams and lines, my face? Edmund Yates, Aged Forty
The loveliest faces are to be seen by moonlight, when one sees half with the eye and half with the fancy. Persian Proverb
Whilst all the landscape was in neutral shade his companion’s face, which was the focus of his eyes, rising above the mist stratum, seemed to have a sort of phosphorescence upon it. She looked ghostly, as if she were merely a soul at large. In reality her face, without appearing to do so, had caught the cold gleam of day from the north-east; his own face, though he did not think of it, wore the same aspect to her.
It was then, as has been said, that she impressed him most deeply. She was no longer the milkmaid, but a visionary essence of woman – a whole sex condensed into one typical form. Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Her mouth he had seen nothing to equal on the face of the earth. To a young man with the least fire in him that little upward lift in the middle of her red top lip was distracting, infatuating, maddening. ibid.
And he saw the red interior of her mouth as if it had been a snake’s. She had stretched one arm so high above her coiled-up cable of hair that he could see its satin delicacy above the sunburn; her face was flushed with sleep, and her eyelids hung heavy over their pupils. The brimfulness of her nature breathed from her. It was a moment when a woman's soul is more incarnate than at any other time; when the most spiritual beauty bespeaks itself flesh; and sex takes the outside place in the presentation.
Then those eyes flashed brightly through their filmy heaviness, before the remainder of her face was well awake. ibid.
I just want to smash your face in [she hits him]. The War of the Roses 1989 starring Michael Douglas & Kathleen Turner & Danny DeVito & Marianne Sagebrecht & Sean Astin & Peter Donat & Heather Fairfield & G G Spradlin et al, director Danny DeVito
You impressed me in the Pantheon with thousands of faces. Faces Places, her to him, 2017
What I like about this project – it’s a spontaneous adventure. ibid.
The faces that I find I photograph them so they do not disappear quickly in the holes of my memory. ibid.