If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself. You must know all the while that it is there, but until it is needed you must never let it emerge into your consciousness in any shape that can be given a name.

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.

Never, never tell them. Try and remember that. Never tell anyone anything ever. Never tell anyone anything again.

How can you expect another to keep a secret if we have been unable to keep it ourselves?

Never tell all you know — not even to the person you know best.

You see, a secret is not something untold. It’s something which can’t be told.

If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.

Just because you keep something a secret doesn't mean it never happened, no matter how much you want that to be true.

A secret is not a thing you're not supposed to tell; it is a thing that can't be told.

There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told.

Most secrets should never be told, but especially those that are more menacing to the listener than to the teller.

She wouldn't say what we both knew. 'The reason you will not say it is, when you say it, even to yourself, you will know it is true: is that it? But you know it is true now. I can almost tell you the day when you knew it is true. Why won't you say it, even to yourself?' She will not say it.

A secret, if it’s kept, can be sweet and comforting, but once it leaks out it can turn on you with a vengeance.

Don't call yourself a secret
unless you mean to keep it.