Cyril Connolly Quotes

When people have recently asked me my profession, I have not dared to reply.

I get very uncomfortable with people watching me.

Well, they know that I'm not very anxious to get into one hour again.

I feel like I'm constantly trying to avoid awkwardness. I always try to pretend that the awkwardness doesn't exist, and then it just becomes more awkward.

I actually feel awkward being at the center of attention.

Most people can’t stomach silence; it provides too much opportunity to think about things they prefer to avoid.

Whenever you avoid alarming situations, you almost always increase your anxiety about them.

Clearly, all fear has an element of resistance and a leaning away from the moment. Its dynamic is not unlike that of strong desire except that fear leans backward into the last safe moment while desire leans forward toward the next possibility of satisfaction. Each lacks presence. (29)

I tend to close my eyes when I look at people anymore.

Some people stay far away from the door if there's a chance of it opening up. They hear a voice in the hall outside and hope that it just passes by.

People would rather be deceived than have the truth cause them anxiety

Our fear leads us to say no all the time.

I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they'll 'say something about it' or not. I hate if they do, and if they don't.

I didn't like the sound of people gasping at the mere mention of my name. It horrified me...

Billy covered his head with his blanket. He always covered his head when his mother came to see him in the mental ward - always got much sicker until she went away. It wasn’t that she was ugly, or had bad breath or a bad personality. She was a perfectly nice, standard-issue, brown-haired, white woman with a high school education. She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone through so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn’t really like life at all.

All I can do is stand still- I feel like if I just stand still, I can stop it from being true, I can pretend that everything is all right.

A sure way to irritate people and to put evil thoughts into their heads is to keep them waiting a long time. This makes them immoral.

Mari remembered what she had read in the young girl's eyes the moment she had come into the refectory: fear. Fear. Veronika might feel insecurity, shyness, shame, constraint, but why fear? That was only justifiable when confronted by a real threat: ferocious animals, armed attackers, earthquakes, but not a group of people gathered together in a refectory. But human beings are like that,' she thought. 'We've replaced nearly all our emotions with fear.

Indulge in procrastination, and in time yon will come to this, that because a thing ought to be done, therefore you can't do it.

When we hide from the world in this way, we feel secure. We may think we have quieted our fear, but we are actually making ourselves numb with fear. We surround ourselves with our own familiar thoughts, so that nothing sharp or painful can touch us.

The air seemed poisoned with fear and hatred. People eyed on another suspiciously, and the streets smelled of a silence that knotted your stomach.

The first time I did a reading/signing thing at Cody's, the woman who did the introduction said something like that, and I wasn't the only one cringing. I remember looking out into the audience and seeing people's faces and people whispering to each other, and thinking like "Ugh, can we just cancel the whole thing? I can't go out there after she said that."

Oh, no, I was afraid of that! I'd better go and hide.

I just don't like to go out and deal with the real world. It's scary.

I'm not looking at anything now. I'll look at it at the time. What I have seen, what I've seen is so bad.