A performer may be taken in by his own act, convinced at the moment that the impression of reality which he fosters is the one and only reality. In such cases we have a sense in which the performer comes to be his own audience; he comes to be performer and observer of the same show. Presumably he introcepts or incorporates the standards he attempts to maintain in the presence of others so that even in their absence his conscience requires him to act in a socially proper way.

All the world is not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it isn’t are not easy to specify

Any group of persons – prisoners, primitives, pilots, or patients – develop a life of their own that becomes meaningful, reasonable and normal once you get close to it.

The normal and the stigmatized are not persons, but perspectives.

The world, in truth, is a wedding.

The self... is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented.

Approved attributes and their relation to face make every man his own jailer; this is a fundamental social constraint even though each man may like his cell.