Quotes About Inhibition

You're sad but you hold everything back...

Every science is a mutilated octopus. If its tentacles were not clipped to stumps, it would feel its way into disturbing contacts.

He laughed. I suddenly wanted to laugh, to laugh with him, to sit here, or maybe outside in the rain, and just laugh with him. But I couldn't. I couldn't even smile.

Deliberately she shrouded the light in her eyes, but it shone against her will in the faintly perceptible smile.

For a moment, I debated whether I should tell someone about the words I'd started writing down, but I couldn't. In a way, I felt ashamed, even though my writing was the one thing that whispered okayness in my ear. I didn't speak it, to anyone.

For some reason, I kept trying to see how much pubic hair he had. It was all matted and kind of orange, like something you use to scrub soap scum. When he caught me looking, he told me that the landlord on the show – Mr. Furley or whatever his name was – didn't try hard enough. "That guy doesn't try hard enough, Steve," he said. I felt weirdly ashamed when he said that. So much so that I went into his room and urinated on his bed.

It seemed an advantage to be traveling alone. Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by whom we are with, we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others...Being closely observed by a companion can inhibit us from observing others; we become taken up with adjusting ourselves to the companion's questions and remarks, we have to make ourselves seem more normal than is good for our curiosity.

We can be laughed into silence for attempting to speak in praise of phenomena which we lack the right words to describe. We may censor ourselves before others have the chance to do so. We may not even notice that we have extinguished our own curiosity, just as we may forget we had something to say until we find someone who is willing to hear it.

Love's easy to learn. It's like taking a risk. You set your mind on it and refuse to be afraid, and in no time you feel terrifically exhilarated and all your inhibitions fly out of the window.

Fear is the condom of life. It doesn't allow you to enjoy things.

As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.

In my life as an architect, I found that the single thing which inhibits young professionals, new students most severely, is their acceptance of standards that are too low.

Shyness is nice, but shyness can stop you from doing all the things in life that you'd like to.

If you want to do something big in your life, you must remember that shyness is only the mind.

I write: Reason for not jumping: Too messy. Too public. Too crowded.

I didn't dare look at Conrad. I was afraid my love for him and my need for him to say yes would be written on my face like a poem.

The truth is, I had always wanted to be a comedian, but I really didn't have that kind of personality, and it's a terrifying thing to say.

It is too dangerous for me to put these things into words. I am afraid they might then become gigantic and I be no longer able to master them.

Don't ask about the consequences if you want to do something. Otherwise you'll never do it.

Cowardice... is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend functioning of the imagination.

You're doing great,' she said. 'You're in Birmingham .' Scullion wanted to say this was a contradiction in terms but he couldn't speak.

I couldn't afford luxuries like embarrassment

There were always people like the pope. They serve a certain function, of course. They subsidize us. But, they don't create anything and they must never be allowed to stop the artist from creating.

Repression is Justine's whole being - repression of sex, of anger and of her own violence; the repressions demanded of Christian virtue, in fact.