Quotes About Insecurity

I'd always spoil what I did so nobody would ask me to do it again.

I began to see why woman-haters could make such fools of women. Woman-haters were like gods: invulnerable and chockfull of power. They descended, and then they disappeared. You could never catch one.

I thought if only I had a keen, shapely bone structure to my face or could discuss politics shrewdly or was a famous writer Constantin might find me interesting enough to sleep with.

I gathered all my news of Joan into a little, bitter heap, though I received it with surface gladness. Joan was the beaming double of my old best self, specially designed to follow and torment me.

And then I wondered if as soon as he came to like me he would sink into ordinariness, and if as soon as he came to love me I would find fault after fault, the way I did with Buddy Willard and the boys before him.... The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the coloured arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.

The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it.

Being with Jody and Mark and Cal was beginning to weigh on my nerves, like a dull wooden block on the strings of a piano. I was afraid that at any moment my control would snap, and I would start babbling about how I couldn't read and couldn't write and how I must be just about the only person who had stayed awake for a solid month without dropping dead of exhaustion.

and I felt their eyes on my flat, virgin stomach.

I had a suspicion that my mother had called Jody and begged her to ask me out, so I wouldn't sit around in my room all day with the shades drawn. I didn't want to go at first, because I thought Jody would notice the change in me, and that anybody with half an eye would see I didn't have a brain in my head.

Then he just stood there [naked] in front of me and I kept on staring at him. The only thing I could think of was turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed.

I didn't want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn't know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I'd cry for a week.

I get a little frightened when I think of life slipping through my fingers like water…

I felt now that all the uncomfortable suspicious I had about myself were coming true, and I couldn't hide the truth much longer.

I didn't want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn't know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I'd cry for a week

I didn't really see why people should look at me

The one man since I've lived who could blast Richard.

I am terrified even to have known him, he makes all others mere puny fragments.

I get a little frightened when I think of life slipping through my fingers like water—so fast that I have little time to stop running.

with girls (house bristles with suspicion and frigidity; how much is paranoia transference? the damnable thing is that they can sense insecurity and meaness like animals smell blood)

Take fear, for instance. During my seminars I ask the audience, "How many of you would cite fear as your primary motivation for success?" Not many people put up their hand. However, then I ask, "How many of you would cite security as one of your main motivators for success?" Almost everyone puts up his or her hand. But get this—security and fear are both motivated by the same thing. Seeking security comes from insecurity, which is based in fear.

Seeking security comes from insecurity, which is based in fear.

What profession is more trying than that of author? After you finish a piece of work it only seems good to you for a few weeks; or if it seems good at all you are convinced that it is the last you will be able to write; and if it seems bad you wonder whether everything you have done isn't poor stuff really; and it is one kind of agony while you are writing, and another kind when you aren't.

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And in short, I was afraid. And

violence spreads like a virus by contaminating others. ... Jealousy and suspicion spread like viruses too.