Quotes About Anxiety

During Advent, we have to sit in our own anxiety and funkiness long enough to know what a Promised Land would be like, or, to put it another way, what it means to be saved--which, if we are to believe Jesus or Gandhi, specifically means to see everyone on earth as family.

I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die.

why do we make it all seem like a crisis, over and over again? Why do we worry it all to death, like dogs with socks or chew-toys? 'Look at it this way...In a hundred years? - All new people.

I was frozen like in a dream when your feet weigh fifty pounds each and the danger is almost upon you.

She lived in fear of ifonic endings. (91)

There are few experiences as depressing as that anxious barren state known as writer's block, where you sit staring at your blank page like a cadaver, feeling your mind congeal, feeling you talent run down your leg and into your sock.

My idea of everything going smoothly on an airplane is (a) that I not die in a slow-motion fiery crash or get stabbed to death by terrorists and (b) that none of the other passengers try to talk to me. All conversation should end at the moment the wheels leave the ground.

You need to trust yourself, especially on a first draft, where amid the anxiety and self-doubt, there should be a real sense of your imagination and your memories walking and woolgathering, tramping the hills, romping all over the place. Trust them. Don't look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.

Dread was my governess growing up.

For people like me, the fight-or-flight instinct comes out in the desperate desire to fix, people-please, and create harmony.

Scuse me, lady, but I'm Wisp, 'cause that's all I am, a wisp of a thing, not much good for changing a thing in the world, said the boy for when he stepped inside, the light from the grimy window gave her a good view of his anxious, pointed little face.

sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach – waiting for a gift from the sea.

His face was pale and there was a sheen of sweat on it, and his hands were rigid in his lap. If she had touched him she would have felt locked muscles.

We can become so cruel and so selfish when we are afraid.

For how many people does fear of the future take away the present as well?

One time Gifford had asked Mona: "What's the difference between men and women?" Mona had said: "Men don't know what can happen. They're happy. But women know everything that can happen. They worry all the time.

Only love could create such conflict, such longing, such fear.

I was feeling fear. Not a wild, mortal fear, but something cold like a hook in my side.

His eyes closed for a split second and he sank against Armand's shoulder, feeling Armand's hand on his back. Far away he heard Armand's voice: "What do I do with you, my beloved? Especially now, when I myself am so afraid.

I was just walking around saying "We're all gonna die!" I never got over it. I went to class, I did what I had to do, but I was a gibbering idiot. It never went away. I never again felt the same way about life and death.

The horror was this: the others.

boy—before intense anxiety had crushed his chances for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and sent him into the awful mental decline in which he'd been made a vampire.

Strength? What strength! This is a weak, flopping, sloshy, repulsive collection of nerves and ganglia. Don't even mention the word 'strength.

Worry stops your ears to the real music. Worry doesn't let you fold your arms around the bones of those you love.