Francesca Lia Block Quotes

Kissing is kind of scary.

I know I was known as a ladies man and all that, but even the thought of holding my heroine's hand made me break into a sweat.

Perhaps he was afraid as I was that we'd be caught. Or perhaps he was breathing me in just as I was letting him come into my lungs, my eyes, my heart.

Love: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge.

I am in great terror of your understanding by which you penetrate into my world; and then I stand revealed and I have shared my kingdom with you.

I'm a total wreck. Afraid to let anyone near. Afraid they'll see the real me.

I'm scared," she said. "These days I feel like a snail without a shell." "I'm scared too," I said. "I feel like a frog without any webs." She looked up and smiled. Wordlessly we walked over to a shaded part of the building and held each other and kissed, a shell-less snail and a webless frog.

My defenses were so great. The cocky rock and roll hero who knows all the answers was actually a terrified guy who didn't know how to cry. Simple.

Even though I'm in love, sometimes I get so afraid.

Love is the scent of a sleeping back, death a slight draft of bad breath.

Tell me how you could say such a thing, she said, staring down at the ground beneath her feet. You're not telling me anything I don't know already. 'Relax your body, and the rest of you will lighten up.' What's the point of saying that to me? If I relaxed my body now, I'd fall apart. I've always lived like this, and it's the only way I know how to go on living. If I relaxed for a second, I'd never find my way back. I'd go to pieces, and the pieces would be blown away. Why can't you see that? How can you talk about watching over me if you can't see that?

I’m still afraid of being totally honest. I’m more afraid of this than dying.

Fear is like a little garden spider that makes us jump back or the poor lost bee on the steering wheel that we blame for our automobile wreck. The problem in fear is our response - the way we treat animals or insects that frighten us. . . . Fear is also the universal scapegoat we blame when we take flight from intimacy or shrink up inside ourselves in a thousand little ways.

I am desperate and vulnerable. ... I am always terrified.... Beauty can sometimes be so very troublesome.

Whenever there's the experience of a broken heart, there's the experience of fear.

Fear is a place where you just tell the truth

She was afraid, and the afraid, she realized, sought opportunities for bravery in love.

I had a very easy time loving an audience. But when it's one-on-one with somebody, all I wanted to do was run away, because maybe they're going to want something from me I can't give, or they're going to hurt me.

Is it still there?" I asked, staring at his head, bent over, as he wedged the stethoscope beneath my left breast. And then, before I could stop myself, "Does it sound broken?

Part of me is made of glass, and also, I love you.

There is so much fragility in kissing, in other people: It is all glass.

Your slightest look easily will unclose me, though I have closed myself as fingers, you open petal by petal myself a Spring opens her first rose.

if only these treasures were not so fragile as they are precious and beautiful.

Things that I'm afraid to do are always about being afraid of being exposed. Every time, that's what it's always about.