Quotes About Fear

I had a lot of fears that the universe would discover just how different I was from it.

The basic thing is, how frightened are you of chaos? And how happy are you with order?

You can't go back, he thought. You can't go from people to nonpeople. In panic he thought, I'm dependent on them. Thank god they stayed.

the basis of life is not a greed to exist, not a desire of any kind. It's fear, the fear which I saw here. And not even fear; much worse. Absolute dread. Paralyzing dread so great as to produce apathy.

This can't be normal death…[this] is unnatural.

I couldn't do that. How can you live like that? You've got to have people you can depend on, somebody strong, somebody to take care of you. This is a big frigid world, completely bleak and hostile and empty of warmth. You know what happens to you if you let go and fall?

One invisible puff-puff whisk of economically priced Ubik banishes compulsive obsessive fears that the entire world is turning into clotted milk, worn-out tape recorders and obsolete iron-cage elevators, plus other, further, as-yet-unglimpsed manifestations of decay.

You shouldn't be frightened so easily. Or life is going to be too much for you.

It had been a phobia of his for years that someday he would fall into the hands of madmen---in particular, madmen who seemed sane up until the last moment.

And when I gave my phone number the last two times I gave it wrong—another number. And to me the weirdest thing of all: at night phone numbers swim up into my mind that I never heard of before. I'm afraid to call them; I don't know why.

know it's my psychosis, he said to himself, but I still don't want to get caught.

Now that her initial fear had diminished, something else had begun to emerge from her. Something more strange. And, he thought, deplorable. A coldness. Like, he thought, a breath from the vacuum between inhabited worlds, in fact from nowhere: it was not what she did or said but what she did not do and say.

He has integrated his early fears and guilts into one interwoven grid, the ship said to itself. There is no way I can serve up a pleasant memory to him because he instantly contaminates it.

Already Sam Regan could feel the power of the drug wearing off; he felt weak and afraid and bitterly sickened at the realization. So goddamn soon, he said to himself. All over; back to the hovel, to the pit in which we twist and cringe like worms in a paper bag, huddled away from the daylight.

Perhaps at some other time, when there was no war, men might not act this way, hurrying an individual to his death because they were afraid. Everyone was frightened, everyone was willing to sacrifice the individual because of the group fear.

Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.

and vast ugly teeth strove to crunch him, crunch him with avid relish.

Começou a caminhar sem destino, as mãos nos bolsos, descendo a canaleta de pedestres. Os minutos passavam e cada vez o medo e o desalento aumentavam mais. Tudo desmoronava ao seu redor. Ele se sentia incapaz de evitar o colapso; limitava-se a testemunhá-lo, completamente impotente, engolfado por acontecimentos demasiado poderosos para que pudesse compreendê-los.

I'm doomed, in the classic sense.

Being a Berlin cop in 1942 was a little like putting down mousetraps in a cage full of tigers.

A man might think he can stare into the abyss without falling in but sometimes the abyss stares back. Sometimes the abyss exerts a strange effect on your sense of balance.

Horror does not need the dark, and sometimes a truly evil deed shuns the shadows.

I'm terrified of the thought of time passing (or whatever is meant by that phrase) whether I 'do' anything or not. In a way I may believe, deep down, that doing nothing acts as a brake on 'time's - it doesn't of course. It merely adds the torment of having done nothing, when the time comes when it really doesn't matter if you've done anything or not.

I'm just trying to wake up - I'm so afraid of sleeping all my life and then dying - I want to wake up first. I wouldn't care if it was just for an hour, as long as I was properly alive and awake…