#insecurity

Everything might scatter. You might be right. I suppose it's something we can't easily get away from. People need to feel they belong. To a nation, to a race. Otherwise, who knows what might happen? This civilisation of ours, perhaps it'll just collapse. And everything scatter, as you put it. ↗

— Kazuo Ishiguro

#chaos #civilization #destruction #fear #insecurity

It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me. ↗

— Stephen Fry

#books #depression #insecurity #isolation #language

Plainly, this unwillingness to give ground even on unimportant disagreements is the symptom of some deepseated insecurity, as was my one-time fondness for making teasing remarks (which I amended when I read Anthony Powell's matter-of-fact observation that teasing is an unfailing sign of misery within) and as is my very pronounced impatience. The struggle, therefore, is to try and cultivate the virtuous side of these shortcomings: to be a genial host while only slightly whiffled, for example, or to be witty at the expense of one's own weaknesses instead of those of other people. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#teasing #witty

Unfortunately, I am only myself. ↗

— Lisa Burstein

#insecurity #first-sentence

I'm always described as 'cocksure' or 'with a swagger,' and that bears no resemblance to who I feel like inside. I feel plagued by insecurity. ↗

— Ben Affleck

#bears #cocksure #described #feel #i

I never have been insecure, because I see what a waste it is. I know there is a solution to insecurity. I don't tend to be thrown by problems that don't have solutions. And insecurity has a wealth of alternatives. ↗

— Drew Barrymore

#because #been #i #i see #insecure

It's an old adage that the way to be safe is never to be secure... Each one of us requires the spur of insecurity to force us to do our best. ↗

— Harold W. Dodds

#best #each #force #insecurity #never

I think we all have blocks between us and the best version of ourselves, whether it's shyness, insecurity, anxiety, whether it's a physical block, and the story of a person overcoming that block to their best self. It's truly inspiring because I think all of us are engaged in that every day. ↗

— Tom Hooper

#because #best #between #block #blocks

Unfortunately, I am only myself. I am scared and alone and unsure, but I am practicing. I am scared and alone and unsure, but that doesn't mean I always will be. Like AJ repeating words, I can repeat being me, until I start to believe it. ↗

— Lisa Burstein

#coming-of-age #insecurity #age

One of the most popular genital surgeries is labia minora reduction. When a similar procedure is performed on healthy girls in some African countries as a coming-of-age rite to control their sexuality, Westerners denounce it as genital mutilation; in the U.S. of A., it's called cosmetic enhancement. But both procedures are based on misogynist notions of female genitalia as ugly, dirty, and shameful. And though American procedures are generally performed under vastly better conditions (with the benefit of, say, anesthesia and antibiotics), the postsurgical results can be similarly horrific, involving loss of sensation, chronic pain, and infection. ↗

— Julia Scheeres

#insecurity #plastic-surgery #sex #age