Michael Leunig Quotes

People have a fear of the unknown. Insects have different senses than us, different amount of limbs and their body structure is very different. It's hard for us to really relate to them and understand them.

People are so fearful about opening themselves up. All you want to do is to be able to connect with other people. When you connect with other people, you connect with something in yourself. It makes you feel happy. And yet it's so scary - it makes people feel vulnerable and unsafe.

I have very, very few friends. I live in a very tight circle and emotionally I'm probably not as generous as I once was. In an average week I probably meet 150 new people and that's uncomfortable sometimes.

I long for another human face just as I fear it.

If I hazard a guess as to the most endemic, prevalent anxiety among human beings-including fear of death, abandonment, loneliness-nothing is more prevalent than the fear of one another.

I would say our social relationships are relatively shallow. We are actually afraid to be intimate, with people - many people even with their wives and husbands.

We'll tell our secrets to the dark"-Adam "Okay"-Mia "So let's hear another of your irrational fears"-Adam "I'm scared of losing you"-Mia "I said 'irrational' fears. Because that's not gonna happen"-Adam "It still scares me"- Mia

It is sad that the air is the only thing we share. No matter how close we get to each other, there is always air between us.

Because you're only thinking they-might-not-like-me-they-might-not-like-me, and guess what? When you act like that, no one likes you.

The refinement of morality increases together with the refinement of fear. Today the fear of disagreeable feelings in other people is almost the strongest of our own disagreeable feelings.

Why do we even bother? Why do we make ourselves so open to such easy damage? Is it all loneliness? Is it all fear? Or is it just to experience those narcotic moments of belonging with someone else?

I was afraid of being rejected, yes. I was also afraid of being accepted for the wrong reasons.

Putting my hand in someone else’s has always been my definition of happiness. Before I fall asleep, often - in that small struggle not to lose consciousness and go into the greater world - often, before I get up the courage to go into the vastness of sleep, I pretend that someone has my hand in theirs, and then I go, go to that enormous absence of form that is sleep. And when even after that I don’t have courage, I dream.

The messiness [in my books] is nothing like an Atwood novel. For me, the deeper subjects are secrets versus intimacy, and how both beget safety but also threaten it. And there is a lot for me about loss, too.

Fear destroys intimacy. It distances us from each other; or makes us cling to each other, which is the death of freedom.... Only love can create intimacy, and freedom too, for when all hearts are one, nothing else has to be one--neither clothes nor age; neither sex nor sexual preference; race nor mind-set.

It's an industry of lonely people in a crowd, Bill Margold was saying. 'They're scared to get close to each other. You're far better off having someone to sleep next to then having someone to sleep with because you have to trust someone you sleep next to.

I realize that we all think we might be terrible people. But we only reveal this before we ask someone to love us. It is a kind of undressing.

Into the dark night Resignedly I go, I am not so afraid of the dark night As the friends I do not know, I do not fear the night above As I fear the friends below.

I know there isn't no beast—not with claws and all that, I mean—but I know there isn't no fear, either." Piggy paused. "Unless—" Ralph moved restlessly. "Unless what?" "Unless we get frightened of people.

We live in a society that is afraid of ways of being it doesn't understand.

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.

the lonliest sound in the world is other people making love.

Those whom we most love are often the most alien to us.

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

Each man is afraid of his neighbor's disapproval - a thing which, to the general run of the human race, is more dreaded than wolves and death.