Thomas Merton, The Journals, vol. 6, 24 June 1966, p. 344: "The beauty of the solitary life . . . is that you can throw away all the masks and forget them until you return among people."
For, as one of my aphorisms has it, "The step into the social is by dissimulation."
Before I quit my cell, I put on my face, don my mask, go gray, and try not to appear too intense.