Quotes About Fear

I'm not afraid of new things. I'm just afraid of feeling alone even when there's somebody else there. I'm afraid of feeling bad. Maybe that's selfish, but it's the way I feel.

There are, apparently, persons who are deeply afraid of their own emotions, particularly the painful ones. Grief, regret, sadness. Sadness especially, perhaps. Dolores describes these persons as afraid of obliteration, emotional engulfment. As if something truly and thoroughly felt would have no end or bottom. Would become infinite and engulf them. I am saying that such persons usually have a very fragile sense of themselves as persons. As existing at all

Like many Americans of his generation in this awkwardest of post-Imperial decades, an age suspended between exhaustion and replenishment, between input too ordinary to process and input too intense to bear, Sternberg is deeply ambivalent about being embodied; an informing fear that, were he really just an organism, he'd be nothing more than an ism of his organs.

My own terror of appearing sentimental is so strong that I've decided to fight against it, some; but the terror is still there. . . . Do you identify with a distaste/fear about sentimentality? Do you agree that, past a certain line, such distaste can turn everything arch and sneering and too ironic? Or do you have your own set of abstract questions to drive yourself nuts with?

the people to be most frightened of are the people who are the most frightened.

That everything is on fire, slow fire, and we're all less than a million breaths away from an oblivion more total than we can even bring ourselves to even try to imagine.

That it takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak.

YES, I'M PARANOID—BUT AM I PARANOID ENOUGH?

having a lot of money does not immunize people from suffering or fear.

Knowing that internal stress could cause failure on the exam merely set up internal stress about the prospect of internal stress.

That most Substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning tehy have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking. That the cute Boston AA term for this is 'analysis paralysis.' ... That other people can often see things about you that you yourself canno see, even if those people are stupid ... That having a lot of money does not immunize people from suffering or fear. That trying to dance sober is a whole different kettle of fish.

The moment he recognized what exactly was on one cartridge he had a strong anxious feeling that there was something more entertaining on another cartridge and that he was potentially missing it. He realized that he would have plenty of time to enjoy all the cartridges, and realized intellectually that the feeling of deprived panic over missing something made no sense.

He cranks the condo's AC way down at night and still most mornings wakes up soaked, fetally curled, entombed in that kind of psychic darkness where you're dreading whatever you think of.

I think the world divides neatly into those who are excited by the managed induction of terror and those who are not. I do not find terror exciting. I find it terrifying.

There are, apparently, persons who are deeply afraid of their own emotions, particularly the painful ones. Grief, regret, sadness. Sadness especially, perhaps. Dolores describes these persons as afraid of obliteration, emotional engulfment. As if something truly and thoroughly felt would have no end or bottom. Would become infinite and engulf them.' 'Engulf means obliterate.

Now a second-order vain person is a vain person who's also vain about appearing to have an utter lack of vanity. Who's enormously afraid that other people will perceive him as vain. A second-order vain person will sit up late learning jokes in order to appear funny and charming, but will deny that he sits up late learning jokes. Or he'll perhaps even try to give the impression that he doesn't regard himself as funny at all.

It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames.

When you're meeting a whole lot of new people and having to do things you're in—I'm in a constant low-level state of anxiety. Which produces adrenaline, and kind of shuts down—there's a difference between short-term, people-based anxiety. And sort of deep, existential, you know, fear, that you feel all the way down to your butthole. And that, I, that's…that's what I'll have when I'm alone.

No more Network reluctance to make a program too entertaining for fear its commercials would pale in comparison.

The mother at thirty with face commencing to display the faint seams of the plan for the second face life had in store for her and which she feared would be her own mother's

That the people to be most frightened of are the people who are the most frightened.

I've already just completely opened up about my shame and my inability to be open and straightforward about this. You're exposing something I've already held up to view. It's your shame about being ashamed of what you're afraid might be seen as a lack of brightness that's getting to stay buried under this dead horse of my deformity that you're trying to whip.

The neurology of failure. What if he was simply born and destined to live in the shadow of Total Fear and Despair, and all his so-called activities were pathetic attempts to distract him from the inevitable?

I fear this feeling more than I fear anything, man. More than pain, or my mom dying, or environmental toxicity. Anything.