Don't let the excess of demand make you loose your command and get you further from what you've planned.

There is certainly no hope left of getting away. And it isn't even terrible; it's possibly funny, if even that. It's embarrassing. That's all. A little embarrassing to realize that I no longer control my life, that the major decisions have already been made, long before I was conscious that any change was occurring.

The mind cannot fall asleep as long as it watches itself. Only when the mind moves unwatched and becomes absorbed in images that tug it as it were to one side does self-consciousness dissolve and sleep with its healing, brilliantly detailed fictions pour in upon the jittery spirit. Falling asleep is a study in trust. Likewise, religion tries to put as ease with the world. Being human cannot be borne alone. We need other presences. We need soft night noises-a mother speaking downstairs. We need the little clicks and sighs of a sustaining otherness. We need the gods.

Students of public speaking continually ask, How can I overcomeself-consciousness and the fear that paralyzes me before anaudience?Did you ever notice in looking from a train window that somehorses feed near the track and never even pause to look up at thethundering cars, while just ahead at the next railroad crossing afarmer's wife will be nervously trying to quiet her scared horse asthe train goes by?How would you cure a horse that is afraid of cars— graze him in aback-woods lot where he would never see steam-engines orautomobiles, or drive or pasture him where he would frequently seethe machines?Apply horse-sense to ridding yourself of self-consciousness andfear: face an audience as frequently as you can, and you will soon stop shying. You can never attainfreedom from stage-fright by reading a treatise. A book may giveyou excellent suggestions on how best to conduct yourself in thewater, but sooner or later you must get wet, perhaps even strangleand be half scared to death. There are a great many wetlessbathing suits worn at the seashore, but no one ever learns to swimin them. To plunge is the only way.

Whenever people are certain they understand our peculiar situation here on this planet, it is because they have accepted a religious Faith or a secular Ideology (Ideologies are the modern form of Faiths) and just stopped thinking.

It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing— they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.

Self consciousness is the ultimate wisdom of life.

He that has a big nose thinks everyone speaks of it.

When we are self-conscious, we cannot be wholly aware; we must throw ourselves out first. This throwing ourselves away is the act of creativity.

Those people who are uncomfortable in themselves are disagreeable to others.

If you happen to have a wart on your nose or forehead, you cannot help imagining that no one in the world has anything else to do but stare at your wart, laugh at it, and condemn you for it, even though you have discovered America.

Self-consciousness is the curse of the city and all that sophistication implies.