Quotes About Insecurity

Love meant always being a little afraid.

She had this terrible, irrational fear that if she let go of him she would never touch him again and the thought of that was paralyzing.

Only in the desert do we become aware of our terrible simple-mindedness, but we are afraid of admitting it.

The reason behind the need to dominate others derives from a terror of being dominated by them.

The truth is, I was afraid the day I walked into Stanford. And I was afraid the day I walked out.

I remember being onstage once when I didn't have fear: I got so scared I didn't have fear that it brought on an anxiety attack.

I'd study the people around me for clues. Clues to figure out whom to emulate, how to dress, how to speak, how to act, how to dance. I'd grown up feeling unworthy and underloved. I wanted nothing more than to feel secure in myself—to feel that I was really good at something.

Lack of attention from Daddy made me think less of me and not less of him.

When people close to us try to boost their self-importance by cutting us down, the wounds go deep.

Harm enters only where fear makes an opening

I was a very lonley child and it's funny but the first word that comes to my head is "starved". I felt starved of affection, starved of love and I felt that it wasn't OK to ask for it. Maybe there was a sense that if I deserved it, it would be there. There must be something I'd done which meant I didn't deserve it.

People love to see you get ahead — so long as you don't get farther ahead than they are.

In fact, in the fixed mindset, adolescence is one big test. Am I smart or dumb? Am I good-looking or ugly? Am I cool or nerdy? Am I a winner or a loser? And in the fixed mindset, a loser is forever.

I've seen so many people with this one consuming goal of proving themselves—in the classroom, in their careers, and in their relationships. Every situation calls for a confirmation of their intelligence, personality, or character. Every situation is evaluated: Will I succeed or fail? Will I look smart or dumb? Will I be accepted or rejected? Will I feel like a winner or a loser?

Think about someone you know who is steeped in the fixed mindset. Think about how they're always trying to prove themselves and how they're supersensitive about being wrong or making mistakes. Did you ever wonder why they were this way? (Are you this way?) Now you can begin to understand why.

Uh-oh, it's the somebody-nobody syndrome. If I win, I'll be somebody; if I lose I'll be nobody.

My friends are always conscious of what people think of them. As though life is something that has an audience.

It's like they can smell the public school on me.

That's the problem with this never-ending centipede of lemmings, Beck. You know they're all pussies, each and every one of 'em. They buy these books to get scared because their lives are too easy. How pathetic is that?

like her entire life is dedicated to proving that she has a life.

And you're not the standard insecure nymph hunting for Faulkner you'll never finish, never start; Faulkner that will harden and calcify, if books could calcify, on your nightstand; Faulkner meant only to convince one-night stands that you mean it when you swear you never do this kind of thing.

That's why you leave the windows open. You don't know how to be alone with yourself. And if you block out the world, there you'd be.

You look up and now I see a part of you that's new to me, a part that does want to be killed and I don't think you've ever been loved the right way and you don't say anything and I don't say anything and we both know that you're testing me, testing the world. You didn't get off that stage tonight until the last person stopped clapping and you didn't tie your shoelaces and you blamed the world when you tripped.

Well, Joe, I would feel like such a fuckup that I wouldn't even want be with you.