Afraid To Open Up Quotes

“Archie became absolutely still, afraid that the rapid beating of his heart might betray his sudden knowledge, the proof of what he'd always suspected, not only of Brother Leon but most grownups, most adults: they were vulnerable, running scared, open to invasion.”

— Robert Cormier

“Don't be afraid to make corrections! Whether the voice came from her memory or was a last whisper from the blinding new star far above, Nita never knew. But she knew what to do. While Kit was still on the first part of the name she pulled out her pen, her best pen that Fred had saved and changed. She clicked it open. The metal still tingled against her skin, the ink at the point still glittered oddly- the same glitter as the ink with which the bright Book was written. Nita bent quickly over the Book and with the pen, in lines of light, drew from the final circle an arrow pointing up-ward, the way out, the symbol that said change could happen- if, only if-”

— Diane Duane

“Dear God,
I am so afraid to open my clenched fists!
Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to?
Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands?
Please help me to gradually open my hands
and to discover that I am not what I own,
but what you want to give me.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

“Trust is so valuable. It's sometimes hard to gain, but so easy to lose. One must always be careful about trusting another, but there are times where people are too careful or too afraid & forget how to open up to those who won't do any harm. Choose wisely who you trust, but don't worry too much. Disappointment occurs, but life goes on”

— Emily Gabriela Vira

“Only cowards and the broken in spirit surrendered the future as payment for the past. Love was the great and beautiful wonder - but surely one should not stay with it in the place where it found one. Why, loving should light the way! Far from engulfing all the rest of life it seemed now that love should open life to one. Whether one kept it or whether one lost it, it failed if it did not send one farther along the way. She had been afraid to think of her love changing because that had seemed to grant that it had failed. But now it seemed that it failed if it did not leave her bigger than it had found her. Her eyes filled in response to the stern beauty of that. Not that one should stay with love in the same place, but rather the meaning of it all was in just this: that it should send one on.”

— Susan Glaspell

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.”

— John Lennon

“Pray to your God, open your heart.
Whatever you do, don't be afraid of the dark.”

— Jared Leto

“At such times, the heart of man turns instictively towards his Maker. In prosperity, and whenever there is nothing to injure or make him afraid, he remembers Him not, and is ready to defy Him; but place him in the midst of dangers, cut him off from human aid, let the grave open before him, then it is, in the time of his tribulation, that the scoffer and unbelieving man turns to God for help, feeling there is no other hope, or refuge, or safety, save in his protecting arm.”

— Solomon Northup

“Finally, the lock clicked and she tugged the secret door open. A rotten stench hit her like a fist. She drew away. The boy at her side recoiled, afraid. Sarah fell to her knees. Sarah could not speak, she could only quiver, her fingers covering her eyes, her nose, blocking out the smell ... She sank to her knees again and she screamed at the top of her lungs, she screamed, for her mother, for her father, screamed for Michel.”

— Tatiana De Rosnay

“The future can be a scary thing. Because it's something that's always left open for anything to happen. It's a total mystery. But at the same time, it's so exciting. Each decision we make can alter how our future will turn out, so how we end up in the future is really our decision. We never know what will be thrown at us, but it's up to each of us as to how we deal with whatever does come. No one else can decide that for us. While I might be wondering about what will happen down the road for me, and gt nervous about it now and then, I am also really hopeful for it because I know there will be so many windows of opportunity that can really change my life if I choose to take hold of them and not be afraid to go for it.”

— David Archuleta

“Sharing your success with others reveals your true humanity. Don't ever be afraid to open your heart to that practice. It has made all the world of difference to me.”

— Andrea Michaels

“What if, instead of being afraid of even talking about death, we saw our lives in some ways as preparation for it.
What if we were taught to ponder it and reflect on it and talk about it and enter it and rehearse it and try it on?What if, rather than being cast out and defined by some terminal category, you were identified as someone in the middle of a transformation that could deepen your soul, open your heart, and all the while-even if and particularly when you were dying-you would be supported by and be part of a community?”

— Eve Ensler

“A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

— John F. Kennedy

“I have a dream about devils, it seems to be night, I'm in my room with a candle, and suddenly there are devils everywhere, in all the corners, and under the tables, and they open the door, and outside the door there's a crowd of them, and they want to come in and grab me. And they're coming close, they're about to grab me. But I suddenly cross myself and they all draw back, afraid, only they don't quite go away, they stand by the door and in the corners, waiting. And suddenly I have a terrible desire to start abusing God out loud, and so I start abusing him, and they suddenly rush at me again in a crowd, they're so glad, and they're grabbing me again, and I suddenly cross myself again-and they all draw back. It's such terrible fun; it takes my breath away.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“I want someone who is open-minded, dedicated to whatever she is doing and isn't afraid to say I love you. As for looks, she shouldn't have three heads. I want a regular human being.”

— Kevin Eubanks

“We need a President who is not afraid of complexity, who believes in an open and tolerant society, and who knows that the world can be made new again - and that President is Al Gore.”

— Caroline Kennedy

“You know the way Jesus
rips open his shirt
to show us his heart, all flaming and thorny,
the way he points to it. I'm afraid
the way I'll miss you will be this obvious.”

— Nick Flynn

“It isn't running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.”

— Margaret Atwood

“... he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered. He wanted her to be a virgin and not a virgin all at once. He wanted to know her. Intimate secrets: Why poetry? Why so sad? Why that grayness in her eyes? Why so alone? Not lonely, just alone - riding her bike across campus or sitting off by herself in the cafeteria - even dancing, she danced alone - and it was the aloneness that filled him with love. He remembered telling her that one evening. How she nodded and looked away. And how, later, when he kissed her, she received the kiss without returning it, her eyes wide open, not afraid, not a virgin's eyes, just flat and uninvolved.”

— Tim O'Brien

“She began to fret about God's exact location. It was the Sunday-school teacher's fault: God is everywhere, she'd said, and Laura wanted to know: was God in the sun, was God in the moon, was God in the kitchen, the bathroom, was he under the bed? ... Laura didn't want God popping our at her unexpectedly ... Probably God was in the boom closet. It seemed the most likely place. He was lurking in there like some eccentric and possibly dangerous uncle, but she couldn't be certain whether he was there at any given moment because she was afraid to open the door. "god is in your heart", said the Sunday-school teacher, and that was even worse. If in the broom closet, something might have been possible, such as locking the door.”

— Margaret Atwood

“My mother has few stories to tell about these times. What I remember from them is the odd look I would sometimes catch in her eyes. It struck me, for the first time in my life, that my mother might be afraid of me. I could not even reassure her, because I was only dimly aware of the nature of her distress, but there must have been something going on in me that was beyond her: at any time I might open my mouth and out would come a language she had never heard before. I had become a visitant from outer space, a time-traveller come back from the future, bearing news of a great disaster.”

— Margaret Atwood

“A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room. You enter its room with bravura, holding a chair at the thing and shouting, Simba!”

— Annie Dillard

“The lesson of a love that should display itself easily in spoken word and open look was one Marilla could never learn. But she had learned to love this slim, gray-eyed girl with an affection all the deeper and stronger from its very undemonstrativeness. Her love made her afraid of being unduly indulgent, indeed. She had an uneasy feeling that it was rather sinful to set one's heart so intensely on any human creature as she had set hers on Anne, and perhaps she performed a sort of unconscious penance for this by being stricter and more critical than if the girl had been less dear to her.”

— L.M. Montgomery

“Because I can see them, I bridge life and death, and they hope I can open for them the door they are afraid to open for themselves.”

— Dean Koontz

“Our weapons are the ironic mind against the literal: the open mind against the credulous; the courageous pursuit of truth against the fearful and abject forces who would set limits to investigation (and who stupidly claim that we already have all the truth we need). Perhaps above all, we affirm life over the cults of death and human sacrifice and are afraid, not of inevitable death, but rather of a human life that is cramped and distorted by the pathetic need to offer mindless adulation, or the dismal belief that the laws of nature respond to wailings and incantations.”

— Christopher Hitchens

“He was afraid that the secrets she'd kept would always be here, inside him, an ugly malignant thing lodged near enough to his heart to upset its rhythm, and though it could be removed, cut out, there would always be scars; bits and pieces of it would remain in his blood, making it wrong somehow, so that if he accidentally sliced his skin open, his blood would
for one heartbeat
flow as black as India ink before it remembered that it should be red.”

— Kristin Hannah

“The covers slipped between them. Amelia shivered as the cool air wafted over her naked back and shoulders. "Come back to bed," she whispered. "I need you to warm me."
Cam stripped away his shirt, and laughed quietly as he felt her hands plucking at the buttons of his trousers. "What happened to my prudish gadji?"
"I'm afraid"- she reached into his open falls and stroked his aroused flesh-" that continued association with you has made me shameless."
"Good, I was hoping for that.”

— Lisa Kleypas

“I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible; to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance, to live so that which came to me as seed goes to the next as blossom, and that which came to me as blossom, goes on as fruit.”

— Dawna Markova

“I continue to marvel at the reluctancy of people to look into the mirror and see all the darkness that's within them: all the deceit, the dishonesty, the insincerity, the lack, the need, the want, the lies ... they would rather look upon the mural of themselves that they've painted on the wall, and stare at that inanimate portrait of beauty, all the while telling themselves that it is the mirror image of them! This is a falsity, this is unreal! It is only when you turn to the unveiled mirror and bravely face your light and your darkness at once, that you will be able to see the true image of you! How can you pull the thorns from your skin if you are too afraid to open your eyes and look at them? You must open your eyes first, look at the thorns where they are piercing your flesh, and only then can you pull them out!”

— C. JoyBell C.

“Papers should include more side remarks, open questions, and such. Very often, these are more interesting than the theorems actually proved. Alas, most people are afraid to admit that they don't know the answer to some question, and as a consequence they refrain from mentioning the question, even if it is a very natural one. What a pity! As for myself, I enjoy saying 'I do not know'.”

— Jean-Pierre Serre

“People are kinda still a bit puritanical, perhaps. People don't expect a woman to feel so open, in a way, about her sexuality onscreen, and they probably find it fascinating. I think more actors are doing it and being open to that and not being afraid of it, so it's becoming less of a thing.”

— Maria Bello

“Don't be afraid of failure. Never fear it because there's always a lesson if you're open to it. There's always a lesson at the end of it. Always.”

— Joe Quesada

“But if the feelings are mutual, I open my heart without restriction. I'm not afraid to say 'I love you'.”

— Bill Kaulitz

“I'm afraid to close my eyes, I'm afraid to open them”

— Heather Donahue

“A man who will not leave his room because he does not know how, or is afraid to open the door, is trapped just the same whether or not the door is locked.”

— Thomas Campbell

“Anthony Weiner and his wife, Huma, have given birth to a baby boy. He posted a photo of the new baby on Twitter, but people are afraid to open it.”

— Jay Leno

“Life moves all too fast. When you feel weak, discouraged, depressed, or afraid, open the Book of Mormon and read.”

— Boyd K. Packer

“When something doesn't go exactly to plan, money is tight or a business is struggling - see it as a challenge rather than a failure. Look outside the box and try and find a solution - you'll be surprised how many great opportunities and possibilities arise when things look bad. You've just got to open your mind and not be afraid of sticking your neck out!”

— Richard Branson