But Inside They Are Afraid Quotes & Sayings

When I saw you in the hall with Darian," he says at last, "I felt more angry than I've felt in a long time. I was angry and . . . and afraid, that you wanted to be there, that you wanted him touching you. In that one look, I felt more than I've ever felt with Caspida. Zahra, I think you're right - love isn't a choice. If I could choose to love Caspida, maybe this would all be going differently, but I don't think that's possible. Not anymore."
All the smoke inside me sinks as I stare at him. "What are you saying?"
He turns and meets my gaze squarely. As much I want to, I find it impossible to look away. The intensity of his copper gaze holds me entranced.
"I think you know," he says softly. "Or am I the only one who feels it? — Jessica Khoury

I don't want to swim on the surface anymore and I never want to pretend again that I know you completely. Let me dive deep inside you, take me in and allow me to look into your
secrets, make me feel every breath I take and crave for it more . Carry me to your darker side where you are afraid to allow
anyone. Pull me deep inside and make me one of your secrets. — Akshay Vasu

I imagine there's a timid animal inside me ... When it's afraid, I feel it tremble. It can't hear. It only knows the fear it feels. It doesn't have memory or an idea of the future. It lives in the present - the right now - and I try to remember it is only a part of myself, a small frightened thing I can pity. When I'm able to do that, something happens. The animal grows less afraid. — Paula Fox

We look at each other without saying anything, both of us smiling like idiots. I heart is so full I can't believe it can possibly still beat without bursting right in front of me. My desire for him is so fierce I'm afraid to stand, because I know my knees will be too weak to hold me up, but there's more than that. This great and bursting thing inside me is love. — Megan Hart

I could see the veins through your skin like a map to inside you. how could skin be that thin? i was so afraid you might drop and break. i stopped breathing so you wouldn't. — Francesca Lia Block

It seems to me that we can't explain all the truly awful things in the world like war and murder and brain tumors, and we can't fix these things, so we look at the frightening things that are closer to us and we magnify them until they burst open. Inside is something that we can manage, something that isn't as awful as it had a first seemed. It is a relief to discover that although there might be axe murderers and kidnappers in the world, most people seem a lot like us: sometimes afraid and sometimes brave, sometimes cruel and sometimes kind. — Sharon Creech

I wish I could explain it so someone could understand it. I'm afraid it's something I can't put into words. There's just this heavy, overwhelming despair - dreading everything. Dreading life. Empty inside, to the point of numbness. It's like there's something already dead inside. My whole being has been pulling back into that void for months. (81) — Kay Redfield Jamison

The dilemma for women who love to write may not have so much to do with finding the elusive literary voice, as with being reluctant to use the one that's already lurking inside, just waiting for the chance to speak up. Many of us, especiall,y those from the generations taught to be good, accommodating girls, are afraid of sounding too strong, too loud, too unconventional, or simply too much like the self we're afraid to reveal to the world. Most of us have at least an inkling of what form our writing voice should take, if only we might find the courage to reveal it. — Nava Atlas

Son, never trust a man who doesn't drink because he's probably a self-righteous sort, a man who thinks he knows right from wrong all the time. Some of them are good men, but in the name of goodness, they cause most of the suffering in the world. They're the judges, the meddlers. And, son, never trust a man who drinks but refuses to get drunk. They're usually afraid of something deep down inside, either that they're a coward or a fool or mean and violent. You can't trust a man who's afraid of himself. But sometimes, son, you can trust a man who occasionally kneels before a toilet. The chances are that he is learning something about humility and his natural human foolishness, about how to survive himself. It's damned hard for a man to take himself too seriously when he's heaving his guts into a dirty toilet bowl. — James Crumley

Our culture teaches us about shame - it dictates what is acceptable and what is not. We weren't born craving perfect bodies. We weren't born afraid to tell our stories. We weren't born with a fear of getting too old to feel valuable. We weren't born with a Pottery Barn catalog in one hand and heartbreaking debt in the other. Shame comes from outside of us - from the messages and expectations of our culture. What comes from the inside of us is a very human need to belong, to relate. — Brene Brown

Even though he knew what she could do, he wasn't the lest bit afraid. It made her wonder what kind of monster lived inside of him. — Kady Cross

This constant 'stay inside and let yourself be protected' mentality has gotten more people killed than all the accidental exposures in the world. It's like we're all addicted to being afraid. — Mira Grant

I looked at all the trees and didn't know what to do.
A box made out of leaves.
What else was in the woods? A heart, closing. Nevertheless.
Everyone needs a place. It shouldn't be inside of someone else.
I kept my mind on the moon. Cold moon, long nights moon.
From the landscape: a sense of scale.
From the dead: a sense of scale.
I turned my back on the story. A sense of superiority.
Everything casts a shadow.
Your body told me in a dream it's never been afraid of anything. — Richard Siken

When I wake up earlier than you and you
are turned to face me, face
on the pillow and hair spread around,
I take a chance and stare at you,
amazed in love and afraid
that you might open your eyes and have
the daylights scared out of you.
But maybe with the daylights gone
you'd see how much my chest and head
implode for you, their voices trapped
inside like unborn children fearing
they will never see the light of day.
The opening in the wall now dimly glows
its rainy blue and gray. I tie my shoes
and go downstairs to put the coffee on. — Ron Padgett

I love you."
The words come out almost in a panic, as if there's no time. As if he's about to walk into Eden again, and I've got to say it before he disappears behind the door.
"I love you too."
Jimmy' response startles me back to the room, the tobacco tin forgotten in my hand. I close it and set it on the counter, afraid of whatever drug it is inside that has me hallucinating.
"I must be losing my mind," I say, shaking my head. "I thought I just heard you say that you loved me."
"I did," Jimmy replies.
"You did?"
"Of course. You said it to me first. It woulda been rude to leave ya hangin' there, wouldn't it? — Ryan Winfield

What is it with young women and exclamation points and smiley faces! So afraid of appearing somber, always wanting to appear light and happy and sparkling, even when they are dying inside. Not ever being able to escape the mask that smiles. She wants to write, really write someday. But she is not fully formed. So she does not write. Not really. Unless attempting to live is a form of attempting to write. The agony of becoming. This is what she experiences. The young girl. She would like to be someone, anyone else. She wants, vaguely, to be something more than she is. But she does not know what that is, or how one goes about doing such a thing. — Kate Zambreno

People have no limits either in love or in hatred. But is it their fault? They despise us because they are afraid, for we remind them that getting crippled or sick might happen to anyone; or, perhaps, the true reason of their hatred lies much deeper inside, stemming from the hidden ugliness of their own souls? — Igor Eliseev

People believe things that aren't true about other people just because of how they look and what kind of vehicle they drive. Why can you not wait and see who they are inside before you make a decision". "Because we're afraid" I said. "If I had trusted them and they turned out to be bad people, they might have robbed us or attack us. It's better to be cautious". "That is a sad thing" he said. "Always thinking the worst of other people". "Sad, but that's the way it is. We have to judge them on how they act and other was of knowing about them except what we can see on the outside — Karen McQuestion

A past may chase you if you try to escape from it ... but once you confront it, it's just an old memory inside you. There's nothing to be afraid of. — Kazuya Minekura

See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God's sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they'd allowed to wither in themselves. — Robert McCammon

She'd seen them on the news, compassionate Americans talking about how the United States should be more welcoming to people who came in peace. She believed these kindhearted people, like Natasha, would never betray them, and she wanted to tell Jende this, that the people of Judson Memorial Church loved immigrants, that their secret was safe with Natasha. But she also knew it would be futile reasoning with a raging man, so she decided to sit quietly with her head bowed as he unleashed a verbal lashing, as he called her a stupid idiot and a bloody fool. The man who had promised to always take care of her was standing above her vomiting a parade of insults, spewing out venom she never thought he had inside him. For the first time in a long love affair, she was afraid he would beat her. She was almost certain he would beat her. And if he had, she would have known that it was not her Jende who was beating her but a grotesque being created by the sufferings of an American immigrant life. — Imbolo Mbue

Our first conversation was on the phone. I was in the bathtub, and I had to tell him that I was in the bathtub because I was afraid he would think I was, like, playing in the toilet when he heard water swishing around. [ ... ] Then we had breakfast in Santa Monica, and I spit egg inside of his mouth when I was talking. — Jennifer Lawrence

We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, because they — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I don't think people talk about mental illness a lot, but they need to know it's OK to talk about how they are feeling. People are afraid of telling the truth because they think it's going to hurt everyone around them. I've kept so much inside that I've literally lost it. I wish more people would get help when they feel like they need it
not just to look to medicine, but to the support of others. — Michael Angelakos

But this was not all, for she soon found that the thread, after going straight down for a little way, turned first sideways in one direction, then sideways in another, and then shot, at various angles, hither and thither inside the heap, so that she began to be afraid that to clear the thread she must remove the whole huge gathering. She was dismayed at the very idea, but, losing no time, set to work with a will; and with aching back, and bleeding fingers and hands, she worked on, sustained by the pleasure of seeing the heap slowly diminish and begin to show itself on the opposite side of the fire. Another thing which helped to keep up her courage was that, as often as she uncovered a turn of the thread, instead of lying loose upon the stone, it tightened up; this made her sure that her grandmother was at the end of it somewhere. — George MacDonald

I thought we were all the same but as I was inside my dead body and looking into the murky river bottom I knew that some are wanting to run and some are afraid to run and maybe they are broken and are angry for it. — Dave Eggers

When I was a boy, I choked on a piece of candy outside the kitchen window for a few minutes while watching my parents making dinner. I thought I was going to die, but I didn't want to scare them. Our existence was so separate, a dying and a doing well, an outside and an inside. Trey Moody's poems hover in that cold, wet, refrigerator-lit place between the dying and the doing well, the outside and the inside. His poems are the thoughts of the person you love who is always standing behind you, slowly and silently suffocating. But they're not afraid to say hello, and please, and I'm scared. — Zachary Schomburg

And then like Pandora, opening the great big box of the world and not being afraid, not even caring whether what's inside is good or bad. Because it's both. Everything is always both. But you have to open it to find that out. — M.R. Carey

She didn't understand that. "How can anyone be afraid of love?"
"How can they not?" His face was completely aghast. "When you love someone ... truly love them, friend or lover, you lay your heart open to them. You give them a part of yourself that you give to no one else, and you let them inside a part of you that only they can hurt - you literally hand them the razor with a map of where to cut deepest and most painfully on your heart and soul. And when they do strike, it's crippling - like having your heart carved out. It leaves you naked and exposed, wondering what you did to make them want to hurt you so badly when all you did was love them. What is so wrong with you that no one can keep faith with you? That no one can love you? To have it happen once is bad enough ... but to have it repeated? Who in their right mind would not be terrified of that? — Sherrilyn Kenyon

She was afraid of all that and so much more, but what terrified her most was inside of her, an insect of unnatural intelligence who'd been living in her brain her entire life, playing with it, clicking across it, wrenching loose its cables on a whim. — Dennis Lehane

You can sail in the desert with a ship of fools. You can smuggle in Moses and his book of rules. But you can't take a mother and give her back her son. What kind of freedom is bought with a gun? People like to build their prison walls when they're afraid to look inside ... a thousand points of light are the muzzle flashes in the night. And the freedoms you profess to hold won't bring the dead back from the cold. — Bruce Dickinson

Gibran says: Once I asked such a scarecrow, "I can understand the farmer who made you - he needs you. I can understand the poor animals - they don't have great intelligence to see that you are bogus. But in the rain, in the sun, in the hot summer, in the cold winter, you remain standing here: for what?" And the scarecrow said, "You don't know my joy. Just to make those animals afraid is such a joy that it is worth suffering rain, suffering sun, suffering heat, winter, everything. I am making thousands of animals afraid! I know I am bogus, there is nothing inside me, but I don't care about that. My joy is in making others afraid." I want to ask you: Would you like to be just like this bogus man - nothing inside, making somebody afraid, making somebody happy, making somebody humiliated, making somebody respectful? Is your life only for others? Will you ever look inside? — Osho

Everyone has it in them to express themselves that fundamental thing that they know they are inside. That rather beautiful afraid person. Which might get translated into aggression, or silence, or shyness, or all kinds of other things. But inside we know that we are huggable and lovable, and we want to love and be loved. That person is yearning for fulfillment. To be the person they know they can be and that's a constant journey; that's a process. It's not acquiring about this thing and then that thing, getting to this place, learning this technique, and finding out how this works. It's about the fact that other people are always more interesting than oneself. Let's forget what successful people have in common, if there's a thing unsuccessful people have in common it's that they talk about themselves all the time. — Stephen Fry

I just always had this feeling inside me of always being nervous and afraid of situations. — Jonathan Knight

I am afraid of a lot of things. A dog. I could be afraid of a dog that's upset, for example. And on the tennis courts, maybe on the outside I look fearless, but on the inside, I'm scared. There's not one player in the world who isn't nervous before matches. Especially important matches. — Rafael Nadal

We live in a society in which it seems that every space, every moment must be 'filled' with initiatives, activity, sound; often there is not even time to listen and dialogue ... Let us not be afraid to be silent outside and inside ourselves, so that we are able not only to perceive God's voice, but also the voice of the person next to us, the voices of others. — Pope Benedict XVI

I was afraid to fall asleep, but staying awake also brought back painful memories. Memories I sometimes wish I could wash away, even though I am aware that they are an important part of what my life is; who I am now. I stayed up all night, anxiously waiting for daylight, so that I could fully return to my new life, to rediscover happiness I had known as a child, the joy that had stayed alive inside me even through times when being alive itself became a burden. These days I live in three worlds: my dreams, and the experiences of my new life, which trigger memories from the past. — Ishmael Beah

I wanted to tell her everything, maybe if I'd been able to, we could have lived differently, maybe I'd be there with you now instead of here. Maybe... if I'd said, 'I'm so afraid of losing something I love that I refuse to love anything,' maybe that would have made the impossible possible. Maybe, but I couldn't do it, I had buried too much too deeply inside me. And here I am, instead of there. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Feel all you can, let your heart speak and guide you. Don't be afraid of the love deep inside you. — Roger Hodgson

Don't be afraid to say how you feel, Dylan. Holding things inside is what gets people in trouble. — Carolee Dean

Our shadow is on the outside. And we can see in the dark: we can see you, we see you turn away, but one day we finally understand that you turn away not from our faces but from your own fears. From those things inside you that you think mark you as someone unlovable to your family, and society, and even to God. — Anne Lamott

I wandered familiar streets feeling lost in the darkness, too scared of the stuff inside my head to be afraid of anything outside it.' - ppg 5 — Annabel Pitcher

Women must find their own answer. That's the important thing. I'm no longer interested in books about women written by men. Even if I could believe in their objectivity, I just can't find their opinions relevant. Now I will only believe what a woman has to say about women, because even if it's not entirely true, it's her struggle and she's on the way to the answer.
Many of you seek masculine approval. Even though you have inside you your way of talking and writing, you have mountains of it inside you, and even though it is enough to begin expressing yourselves so long as it is with your vocabulary, your abstractions, and your own conceptualization, I think you are still afraid of the master: men. Of their judgment. As long as you have this fear, you will not progress. I think the future belongs to women. Men have been completely dethroned. Their rhetoric is stale, used up. We must move on the rhetoric of women, one that is anchored in the organism, in the body. — Marguerite Duras

By the time they arrived, the snow was coming down fast ...
"It's beautiful," she said, pausing outside the door. She thrust out her hands and let the snow land on her palms.
"Yes, yes ... " Reid seemed in a mighty big hurry to get her inside.
"How long did you say the storm would last?" she asked, thinking it would be so beautiful. The snow
not being trapped with Reid Jamison.
Reid hesitated. "Longer than either of us is going to like," he muttered, looking miserable.
Jenna was afraid of that. — Debbie Macomber

He was drawn to the edge of things. To the places old mariners knew, and warned, "Beyond here be monsters." ... He stepped into the beyond, and found the monsters hidden deep inside all the reasonable, gentle, laughing people. He went where even they were afraid to go. — Louise Penny

You can do as much as you think you can,
But you'll never accomplish more;
If you're afraid of yourself, young man,
There's little for you in store.
For failure comes from the inside first,
It's there, if we only knew it,
And you can win, though you face the worst,
If you feel that you're going to do it. — Edgar A. Guest

The evening I went for a walk. To walk for the sake of walking is something I seldom do.Inside my apartment I'd felt inexplicably anxious. I needed to talk to someone, to be reassured. Or perhaps I needed to confess my sin: I was once again having impure thoughts about saving the world. Or it was neither of these
I was afraid I was dreaming. Indeed, considering the events of the day, it was likely that I was dreaming. I sometimes fly in my dreams, and each time I say to myself, "At last
it's happening in reality and not in a dream!"
In any case, I needed to talk to someone, and I was alone. This is my habitual condition, by choice
or so I tell myself. Mere acquaintanceship leaves me unsatisfied, and few people are willing to accept the burdens and risks of friendship as I conceive of it. — Daniel Quinn

Don't be afraid, the darkness you're in is no greater than the darkness inside your own body ... — Jose Saramago

I felt afraid. No one would know that, not Mother and not Mike. I'd keep the fear pushed down inside of me, and no one would know it was there. "I'm awfully happy," I wrote. I was. Awfully happy and awfully in love, and tomorrow I was marrying Mike. — Benedict Freedman

I am sure that all people know deep down inside that the little child in the mother's womb is a human being from the moment of conception, created in the image of God to love and be loved. Let us pray that nobody will be afraid to protect that little child, to help that little child to be born. Jesus said: 'If you receive a little child in my name, you receive me.' — Mother Teresa

He broke the kiss. "Say my name, Martise." He snarled the command, but she wasn't afraid. His hips rocked against hers, and she was impaled on his cock, reveling in his fierce possession. For a few brief hours, he was as much hers as she was his, and she could tell him how much he meant to her in a softly spoken name. Every desire, every craving, every forbidden wish - she infused into her voice. "Silhara." He gasped, a tortured sound, and his eyes rolled back. Martise clutched him to her as he shuddered, felt the sudden pulse of his shaft, his release followed by a wet heat as he came inside her. He hunched over her, chest heaving as he strove to breathe. She clasped his hips with her legs to maintain their connection, reluctant to give him up. He slowly lowered his weight onto her, careful not to crush her. — Grace Draven

If you're afraid of something, then reach deep inside and face it head-on. — Wanda E. Brunstetter

We all must learn to dig down deep inside, trust that inner voice, and not be afraid to face and forgive ourselves. — Darren Johnson

Silence is the worst. Whenever a thick cloud of silence descends, the yapping voices inside me become all the more audible, rising to the surface one by one. I like to believe I know all the women in this inner harm of mine but perhaps there are those I have never met. Together they make a choir that does not know how to tone down. I call them the Choir of Discordant Voices. It is a bizarre choir, now that I think about it. Not only are they all off-key, none of them can read notes. In fact, there is no music at all in what they do. They all talk at the same time, each in a voice louder than the other, never listening to what is being said. They make me afraid of my own diversity, the fragmentation inside of me. That is why I do not like the quiet. I even find it unpleasant, unsettling. — Elif Shafak

We are bombarded with reasons to stay inside: we're afraid of mosquitoes because of West Nile and grass because of pesticides and sun because of cancer and sunscreen because of vitamin-D deficiency. — Nancy Gibbs

When jealousy rears up, it indicates that something inside of you is afraid. It's an alarm, nothing less and nothing more. Treat it as such. — Anthony D. Ravenscroft

I want to look darkness in the eye and not be afraid. I want to feel the resonance of history and all the bad things people have done and try to understand why. I want to stand inside the Colosseum, feel the vibrations of so much death and despair. I want to walk the corridors of Columbine High. I want to touch the walls of Auschwitz. — Kathy Charles

But the problem is that you don't dare to think about anything. You're afraid; you don't know where your thoughts might lead you. Everything inside you is confused. You keep your eyes closed and stay on the old path. They brought you here, I don't know why and it doesn't concern me, but you won't accept my explanations of human guilt. You think it's a joke. Maybe it is, but maybe one could develop quite a nice philosophical idea out of it — Mesa Selimovic