Social Awkwardness Quotes

“For someone like myself in whom the ability to trust others is so cracked and broken that I am wretchedly timid and am forever trying to read the expression on people's faces.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“He could only consider me as the living corpse of a would-be suicide, a person dead to shame, an idiot ghost.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“All I feel are the assaults of apprehension and terror at the thought that I am the only one who is entirely unlike the rest. It is almost impossible for me to converse with other people. What should I talk about, how should I say it? - I don't know.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“I felt this awful obligation to be charming or at least have something to say, and the pressure of having to be charming (or merely verbal) incapacitates me.”
― Peter Cameron, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You

“What is society but an individual? [...] The ocean is not society; it is individuals. This was how I managed to gain a modicum of freedom from my terror at the illusion of the ocean called the world.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know however slightly, and I am at once seized by a shivering violent enough to make me dizzy.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“At this point there's something I should explain about myself, which is that I don't talk much, probably too little, and I think this has been detrimental to my social life. It's not that I have trouble expressing myself, or no more than people generally have when they're trying to put something complex into words. I'd even say I have less trouble than most because my long involvement with literature has given me a better-than-average capacity for handling language. But I have no gift for small talk, and there's no point trying to learn or pretend; it wouldn't be convincing. My conversational style is spasmodic (someone once described it as "hollowing"). Every sentence opens up gaps, which require new beginnings. I can't maintain any continuity. In short, I speak when I have something to say. My problem, I suppose - and this may be an effect of involvement with literature - is that I attribute too much importance to the subject. For me, it's never simply a question of "talking" but always a question of "what to talk about". And the effort of weighing up potential subjects kills the spontaneity of dialogue. In other words, when everything you say has to be "worth the effort", it's too much effort to go on talking. I envy people who can launch into a conversation with gusto and energy, and keep it going. I envy them that human contact, so full of promise, a living reality from which, in my mute isolation, I feel excluded. "But what do they talk about?" I wonder, which is obviously the wrong question to ask. The crabbed awkwardness of my social interactions is a result of this failing on my part. Looking back, I can see that it was responsible for most of my missed opportunities and almost all the woes of solitude. The older I get, the more convinced I am that this is a mutilation, for which my professional success cannot compensate, much less my "rich inner life." And I've never been able to resolve the conundrum that conversationalists pose for me: how do they keep coming up with things to talk about? I don't even wonder about it anymore, perhaps because I know there's no answer.”
― César Aira

“[...] I was afraid to board a streetcar because of the conductor; I was afraid to enter the Kabuki Theater for fear of the usherettes standing along the sides of the red-carpeted staircase at the main entrance; I was afraid to go into a restaurant because I was intimidated by the waiters furtively hovering behind me waiting for my plate to be emptied.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“And I was incapable of living all by myself in those lodgings where I didn't know a soul. It terrified me to sit by myself quietly in my room. I felt frightened, as if I might be set upon or struck by someone at any moment.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“Show me what you've written," I said, although I wanted desperately to avoid looking at it.”
― Osamu Dazai, No Longer Human

“Someone came in all Starfleet badges today. Not on my shift, sadly.'

'Fascist,' Leon had said. 'Why are you so prejudiced against nerds?'

'Please,' Billy said. 'That would be a bit self-hating, wouldn't it?'

'Yeah, but you pass. You're like, you're in deep cover,' Leon said. 'You can sneak out of the nerd ghetto and hide the badge and bring back food and clothes and word of the outside world.”
― China Miéville, Kraken

“Everybody else possessed the key to popularity and happiness, and his clumsy attempts to find his own key always ended with other children looking at him funny, or calling him names.”
― Belinda Bauer, Rubbernecker

“I was overwhelmed with the urge to fill every silence with words. Silence to me was a void in the universe that could suck us all in. It was my assignment to block this deadly void with words and save the world.”
― Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀

“Then there’s the thing about who sits where, which I can’t stand either; it’s more of that kind of thing that makes me pull at my hair when I’m sober. We could sit with my friend between us, but I don’t like the looks of that—like he’s got two girls, one on either side, nudge, nudge, lucky dog, heh-heh. But then again if I sit on the outside of Lara, it will look like I’m some sort of third wheel, some kind of duenna, or some horrible thing like that…
Just sit, Gloria, it doesn’t matter where, because No One Is Looking At You. Hard to believe, and yet it’s an ontological starting point I must adhere to, at times, even just to get out of my apartment.”
― Emily Carter, Glory Goes and Gets Some

“My face is like some sort of bashful chameleon, flashing red at any sign of social interaction. Stupid face.”
― Allyson Kennedy, Speak Your Mind

“Socially we balanced each other out. He was the guy who came into the room and everyone was relieved. I made people deeply uneasy, myself most of all.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“Arriving early at a party is always awkward. If you hang back and wait you look like someone who the cops should be called about. If you knock early you risk finding a host in their underwear not ready for social activity. I knocked early because underwear and social awkwardness are kind of my specialty.”
― Hugh Acheson

“I hope you like social awkwardness, because that's all I'm bringing to the party.”
― Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing: The Best of Year One

“Trying to beat me at the game of awkwardness will only lead me to greater levels of awkwardness. You can't win.”
― Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing: The Best of Year One

“The wine in her head promised music or poetry or truth, but she was stranded on the brink. Therese could not think of a single question that would be proper to ask, because all her questions were so enormous”
― Patricia Highsmith , Carol

“Com a idade, a pessoa se torna menos sensível às peculiaridades dos outros; por exemplo, quando eu tinha quarenta, hesitaria em comer laranjas num trem ou ônibus lotado, mas hoje não apenas como laranjas impunemente como também faria refeições completas sem constrangimentos em qualquer veículo público e terminaria com uma taça de vinho do Porto, que me dou de presente vez ou outra como um agrado especial.”
― Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet

“There is more to stuttering than the mere repetition of words and phrases. And more to anxiety than just being nervous.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Stamerenophobia