#shyness

Reading his autobiography many years later, I was astonished to find that Edward since boyhood had—not unlike Isaiah Berlin—often felt himself ungainly and ill-favored and awkward in bearing. He had always seemed to me quite the reverse: a touch dandyish perhaps but—as the saying goes—perfectly secure in his masculinity. On one occasion, after lunch in Georgetown, he took me with him to a renowned local tobacconist and asked to do something I had never witnessed before: 'try on' a pipe. In case you ever wish to do this, here is the form: a solemn assistant produces a plastic envelope and fits it over the amber or ivory mouthpiece. You then clamp your teeth down to feel if the 'fit' and weight are easy to your jaw. If not, then repeat with various stems until your browsing is complete. In those days I could have inhaled ten cigarettes and drunk three Tanqueray martinis in the time spent on such flaneur flippancy, but I admired the commitment to smoking nonetheless. Taking coffee with him once in a shopping mall in Stanford, I saw him suddenly register something over my shoulder. It was a ladies' dress shop. He excused himself and dashed in, to emerge soon after with some fashionable and costly looking bags. 'Mariam,' he said as if by way of explanation, 'has never worn anything that I have not bought for her.' On another occasion in Manhattan, after acting as a magnificent, encyclopedic guide around the gorgeous Andalusia (Al-Andalus) exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, he was giving lunch to Carol and to me when she noticed that her purse had been lost or stolen. At once, he was at her service, not only suggesting shops in the vicinity where a replacement might be found, but also offering to be her guide and advisor until she had selected a suitable new sac à main. I could no more have proposed myself for such an expedition than suggested myself as a cosmonaut, so what this says about my own heterosexual confidence I leave to others. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#autobiography #carol-blue #edward-said #georgetown-washington #heterosexuality

But she wished she had had the guts to go up to him and say hello. Or possibly break his legs, she wasn't sure which. ↗

— Stieg Larsson

#courage #shyness #anger

introductions are hard to come by when your natural state is shyness ↗

— Steve Martin

#nature

You know what my greatest personal stumbling block is? My shyness. ↗

— Susan Lucci

#greatest #know #personal #shyness #stumbling

Walk to her. Take her hand. But his feet were leaden, and Dorian could do nothing except watch her. His skin flushed beneath his small black mask. He didn't know why, but seeing her made him feel like a man. She was something out of a dream- a dream in which he was not a spoiled young prince, but a king. ↗

— Sarah J. Maas

#shyness #starstruck #dreams

Companionship is a foreign concept to some people. They fear it as much as the majority of people fear loneliness. ↗

— Criss Jami

#companion #companionship #different #extroversion #fear

So, what's up with you and Damian?" Helena asks. "What do you mean?" I can feel the hear of a blush coloring on my cheeks. I can't ever seem to not show how I feel. It's becoming pretty annoying. ↗

— Lisa Ann Sandell

#damian #feelings #helena #love #shyness

So many people are shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if only you were interested in them. ↗

— Sylvia Plath

#lonliness #shyness #confidence

I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth. ↗

— Daphne du Maurier

#social-anxiety #truth #socialism

A man's vanity is more fragile that you might think. It's easy for us to mistake shyness for coldness, and silence for indifference. ↗

— Lisa Kleypas

#indifference #shyness #vanity #devil