#shyness

I had taken the photograph from afar (distance being the basic glitch in our relationship), using my Nikon and zoom lens while hiding behind a fake marble pillar. I was hiding because if he knew I'd been secretly photographing him for all these months he would think I was immature, neurotic and obsessive. I'm not. I'm an artist. Artists are always misunderstood.(Thwonk) ↗

— Joan Bauer

#humor #infatuation #insecurity #shyness #stalking

Aside from helping people with their homework, or anything else they needed, she really didn't know how to meet people. She didn't feel like she was a shy person. She thought of herself as a take-charge sort of girl. And yet, somehow, if there wasn't some request along the lines of "I can't remember how to do long division" then it was just too awkward to go up to someone and say... what? She'd never been able to figure out what. And there didn't seem to be a standard information sheet, which was ridiculous. The whole business of meeting people had never seemed sensible to her. Why did she have to take all the responsibility herself when there were two people involved? Why didn't adults ever help? She wished some other girl would just walk up to her and say, "Hermione, the teacher told me to be friends with you". ↗

— Eliezer Yudkowsky

#shyness #business

...I'm shy in person - so afraid to confess my love - I need a go-between - our mutual friend, the Moon... ↗

— John Geddes

#fear #love #moon #shyness #love

Deep rivers run quiet. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#life #love #shyness #love

In talking, shyness and timidity distort the very meaning of my words. I don't pretend to know anybody well. People are like shadows to me and I am like a shadow. ↗

— Gwen John

#anybody #distort #i #i am #know

Shyness is just egoism out of its depth. ↗

— Penelope Keith

#egoism #just #out #shyness

We often marvel at how introverted, geeky, kid 'blossom' into secure and happy adults. We liken it to a metamorphosis. However, maybe it's not the children who change but their environments. As adults they get to select the careers, spouses, and social circles that suit them. They don't have to live in whatever culture they'er plunked into. ↗

— Susan Cain

#shyness #change

Everybody sees me as this sullen and insecure little thing. Those are just the sides of me that I feel necessary to show because no one else seems to be showing them. ↗

— Fiona Apple

#insecurity #musician #secrets #shyness #musician

I'm never really comfortable at parties. Maybe I'm just not the partying type. ...I think it's because I'm never sure what to do with myself. I mean, there're drinks, but I don't like being drunk.... There's music, but I never really learned to dance to anything that involved an electric guitar. There are people to talk to...but once you put all the stupid things I do aside, I'm really not that interesting. I like reading, staying home, going on walks with my dog.... Who wants to hear about that? Especially when I would have to scream it over music to which no one dances. So I'm there but not drinking, listening to music but not dancing, and trying to have conversations with near-strangers about anything other than my own stupid life.... Leads to a lot of awkward pauses. And then I start wondering why I showed up in the first place." -- Cold Days (The Dresden Files Book 14), pg. 33 ↗

— Jim Butcher

#parties #shyness #life

I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness ... Shyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or other. If I could persuade myself that my manners were perfectly easy and graceful, I should not be shy. ↗

— Jane Austen

#nature