Life & Wisdom Quote by Mary MacLane

Self-invention is the engine here, and MacLane runs it like a poker player with something to prove. The line reads as confession, but it’s really a declaration of method: identity as strategy, not essence. “I never give my real self” doesn’t mourn inauthenticity; it boasts of control. She frames intimacy as a scarce resource and performance as the default mode, a reversal of the usual moral hierarchy where being “real” is virtuous and masks are suspect. MacLane makes the mask the point.

The phrasing does sly double work. “A hundred sides” nods to modern multiplicity before we had the language of “personas” and “brands.” “I turn first one way and then the other” suggests adaptability, but also a refusal to be pinned down by the era’s tight scripts for women: sincere, legible, domesticated. Then she sharpens it: “playing a deep game,” “strong cards up my sleeve.” That’s not romantic mystery; it’s a power fantasy with a defensive edge. If the world insists on appraising and disciplining you, you learn to rig the appraisal.

Context matters: MacLane emerged from a culture that treated a young woman’s interior life as either trivial or dangerous, especially when it was ambitious, erotic, or grandiose. Her diaristic notoriety turned private feeling into public spectacle, so the “real self” becomes both a coveted treasure and a liability. The final clause, “excepting to two friends,” lands as a small, pointed tenderness: trust exists, but it’s rationed. Intimacy isn’t absent; it’s strategically chosen, an act of sovereignty.