#embarrassment

Emily tucks her knees up beneath her and leans forward on the table. 'Do you like Ryan?' she asks Nick, and Mom's eyes go wide. Kevin chokes a little on his water. Mortified, Ryan looks away, holding her breath. Nick turns to Emily, and with mock seriousness, leans down to consult with her. 'Do you like Ryan?' Emily considers this a moment, tapping a finger against her lips in thought. 'I guess most of the time,' she says finally. 'I guess she's okay.' 'Then I think so too' he says, turning back to the rest of the table. He winks at Ryan. 'We've decided you're okay.' She breathes out. 'I can live with that. ↗

— Jennifer E. Smith

#love #siblings #love

I understand the worries of many - not only here in this auditorium -, and some have already written to me to say that technical progress has lowered the threshold that stops people from helping themselves to protected works without the slightest embarrassment. ↗

— Johannes Rau

#auditorium #embarrassment #helping #here #i

I am the daughter of a Chicana and anglo. I think most days I am an embarrassment to both groups. I sometimes hate the white in me so viciously that I long to forget the commitment my skin has imposed upon my life. ↗

— Cherrie Moraga

#anglo #both #commitment #daughter #days

I used to be a discipline problem, which caused me embarrassment until I realized that being a discipline problem in a racist society is sometimes an honor. ↗

— Ishmael Reed

#caused #discipline #embarrassment #honor #i

They did not submit to the obvious alternative, which was simply to close the eyes and fall. So easy, really. Go limp and tumble to the ground and let the muscles unwind and not speak and not budge until your buddies picked you up and lifted you into the chopper that would roar and dip its nose and carry you off to the world. A mere matter of falling, yet no one ever fell. It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be cowards. ↗

— Tim O'Brien

#embarrassment #shame #war #courage

My sincere thanks to friends and family, especially my mother, father, brother, and Mandy, who continue to love and support me despite my obsessions. ↗

— Jonathan Ball

#embarrassment #friendship #gross #language-barrier #poetry

Thinking, not for the first time, that life should come with a trapdoor. Just a little exit hatch you could disappear through when you´d utterly and completely mortified yourself. Or when you had spontaneous zit eruptions. “Good book?” he asked, taking it from her and reading the subtitle, “A Guide for Good Girls Who (Sometimes) Want to Be Bad,” out loud. But life did not come with a trapdoor. ↗

— Michele Jaffe

#funny #teen #funny

The fragility of love is what is most at stake here—humanity's most crucial three-word avowal is often uttered only to find itself suddenly embarrassing or orphaned or isolated or ill-timed—but strangely enough it can work better as a literal or reassuring statement than a transcendent or numinous or ecstatic one. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#humanity #isolation #love #love

I felt my mouth go dry, my throat constrict. What possible interpretation could Peter place on those words, other than that they were about him? - that the entire song was about him? ↗

— Jennifer Paynter

#jane-austen #love #mary-bennet #mortification #peter-bushel

Embarrassment is a villain to be crushed. ↗

— Robert B. Cialdini

#science