Quotes About Fear

I didn't put in my diaphragm' I mumbled when we were through. You stirred, 'Is it dangerous?' 'It's very dangerous,' I said. Indeed, just about any stranger could have turned up nine months later. We might as well have left the door unlocked.

And Lawrence was afraid of the main thing. He had a tendency to talk feverishly all around the main thing, as if bundling it with twine. Presumably if he talked in circles around the main thing for long enough it would lie there, vanquished, panting on its side, like a roped steer.

Only in retrospect do I appreciate that this "doing your bit" is a deadly misapprehension of the nature of familial ties. Better understanding them now, I find blood relationships rather frightening. What is wonderful about kinship is also what is horrible about it: there is no line in the sand, no natural limit to what these people can reasonably expect of you.

For all our squinting at the two sexes to blur them into duplicates, few hearts race when passing gaggles of giggling schoolgirls. But any woman who passes a clump of testosterone-drunk punks without picking up the pace, without avoiding the eye contact that might connote challenge or invitation, without sighing inwardly with relief by the following block, is a zoological fool. A boy is a dangerous animal.

I can only assume that he discovered what I never wish to. That there is no barrier.

Fear is an isometric exercise

I suppose that's a common conceit, that you've already been so damaged that damage itself, in its totality, makes you feel safe.

But you said that if the U.S. were to fall or founder during your lifetime, collapse economically, be overrun by an aggressor, or corrupt from within into something vicious, you would weep. I

you've already been so damaged that damage itself, in its totality, makes you safe.

However intrigued by a "turn of the page," I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else's story.

Kevin nació en 1984… Un año muy temido, como recordarás; y, aunque yo me burlaba mucho de todos aquellos que se tomaban en serio la arbitraria elección de George Orwell para título de su obra, esa fecha marcó para mí el inicio de una tiranía.

Es posible —sugirió Shep, para ver cómo reaccionaba ella— que te concentres en el miedo irracional para no pensar en los miedos racionales. Glynis le puso una mano en el muslo, y el tacto era tan agradable que Shep tuvo escalofríos. —Puede que no hayas ido a la universidad, querido, pero a veces eres muy inteligente.

So I wasn't only afraid of becoming my mother, but a mother. I was afraid of being the steadfast, stationary anchor who provides a jumping-off place for another young adventurer whose travels I might envy and whose future is still unmoored and unmapped.

And I believe that this terror is precisely what must have snagged me, the way a ledge will tempt one to jump off. The very insurmountability of the task, its very unattractiveness, was in the end what attracted me to it.

The future is just the ultimate monster in the closet, the great unknown

Tiene miedo. —No me importa que tenga miedo por ti. Lo que sí me importa es que tenga miedo de ti.

so i wasn't only afraid of becoming my mother, but a mother.

Plots set in the future are about what people fear in the present. They're not about the future at all. The future is just the ultimate monster in the closet, the great unknown.

Though surely to avoid attachments for fear of loss is to avoid life.

I was mortified by the prospect of becoming hopelessly trapped in someone else's story.

Mountaineering

I've got this image in my head of how I want my life to look, and I have absolutely no idea how to get there. And I'm so scared that I'll make some wrong decision - just one - and everything will get messed up and go wrong -for good.

Elaine, I remember the first time I met you. You were so young, so scared. It nearly broke my heart to see you so.

I am in a sun-filled tent, and my father's face, wrinkled, drawn, and pinched with worry, grows clear. He kneels beside my head, and as I look at him and ask, disbelievingly, I live? a smile widens, smoothing the creases at his brow and mouth... Tristan sits beside Lavain, his golden eyes so filled with fear, his face haggard and fraught with shadows. Elaine, he breathes, thank God.