Quotes About Fear

I have so little control over the act of writing that it's all I can do to remain conscious. Actual formal considerations are almost beyond my capacity. Before I sat down and became a writer, before I began to do it habitually and for my living, there was a decades-long stretch when I was terrified that it would suck, so I didn't write. I think that marks a lot of people, a real terror at being bad at something, and unfortunately you are always bad before you can get a little better.

I like everything, I replied, feeling misrepresented and only half amused right back. I don't hate the world. I'm scared of it. There's a difference.

Dread spilled over the Englishman, dread of a world in which he could not die, a world without fear, a meaningless world. Fear permeated all that he knew to be good in life: love, danger, adventure. That was the secret he carried with him and that carried him along. But why venture without fear? You can lie down in the desert and face the beast or the vulture or the villain and mock his weapons and his desires, but to what end? Without fear, what matter if they bite or peck or stab you?

But to die to escape from poverty or love or anything painful is not the mark of a brave man, but rather of a coward; for it is softness to fly from what is troublesome

People don't want to calm down because then they see things they sort of knew but didn't want to face.

This was the consequence of seeing too much and understanding the horrible truth: No one is safe. The world is not manageable.

It was the look you get when facing a sudden and insurmountable danger: the errant truck, the shaky ladder, the crazy person who pins you to the linoleum and insists, with increasing urgency, that everything you know and love can be undone by a grape.

At first, writing for The New Yorker was very scary to me. I couldn't imagine anything that I would write in that typeface.

The word phobic has its place when properly used, but lately it's been declawed by the pompous insistence that most animosity is based upon fear rather than loathing.... I hate computers. My hatred is entrenched, and I nourish it daily. I'm comfortable with it, and no community outreach program will change my mind.

I'd always been afraid of sick people, and so had my mother. It wasn't that we feared catching their brain aneurysm or accidentally ripping out their IV. I think it was their fortitude that frightened us. Sick people reminded us not of what we had, but of what we lacked. Everything we said sounded petty and insignificant; our complaints paled in the face of theirs, and without our complaints, there was nothing to say.

He has a passport, my classmates would whisper. Quick, let's run before he judges us!

The things I've bought from strangers in the dark would curl your hair.

I am a person who feels guilty for crimes I have not committed, or have not committed in years. The police search the train station for a serial rapist and I cover my face with a newspaper, wondering if maybe I did it in my sleep. The last thing I stole was an eight-track tape, but to this day I'm unable to enter a store without feeling like a shoplifter. It's all the anxiety with none of the free stuff.

My sister's the type who religiously watches the fear segments of her local Eyewitness News broadcasts, retaining nothing but the headline...Everything is dangerous all of the time, and if it's not yet been pulled off the shelves, then it's certainly under investigation -- so there.

there are only two kinds of flights: ones in which you die and ones in which you do not.

The word 'phobic' has its place when properly used, but lately it's been declawed by the pompous insistence that most animosity is based upon fear rather than good old-fashioned loathing.

Her expression changed then, becoming fearful rather than merely pained. It was the look you get when facing a sudden and insurmountable danger: the errant truck, the shakey ladder, the crazy person who pins you to the linoleum and insists, with increasing urgency, that everything you know and love can be undone by a grape.

If I'm walking down an American street and anyone darker than a peanut shell approaches, I'll say, Hello. This because, if I don't say it, he or she might think that I'm anxious. Which, of course, I must be, otherwise I'd walk by in silence, just as I do with my fellow Caucasians. Does this make me racist, or simply race conscious? Either way, I'm more afraid of conservatives than I am of black people.

Every time I see him could be the last, and the pressure I feel to make our conversation meaningful paralyzes me.

The word phobic has its place when properly used, but lately it's been declawed by the pompous insistence that most animosity is based upon fear rather than loathing. No credit is given for distinguishing between these two very different emotions. I fear snakes. I hate computers. My hatred is entrenched, and I nourish it daily. I'm comfortable with it, and no community outreach program will change my mind.

Nothing feels better than being singled out by something that at best should fear you and at worst would like to eat you.

You're afraid of moths?" He nodded yes and winced a little. "But nobody's afraid of moths." "I am," he whispered, and he looked behind us, as if afraid that one might be listening.

Fiecare reuniune are un moment anume in care se sparge. Ajuns la maturitate, mi se intampla de multe ori sa incerc sa identific acest moment, temandu-ma in acelasi timp, de inevitabilul care urmeaza sa se produca. Musafirii vor repeta aceleasi poante, iar la un moment dat, va fi prea mult - sau vei ramane fara iarba sau bautura, si-ti dai astfel seama ca atat ati avut in comun.

In fact, there are only two kinds of flights: ones in which you die and ones in which you do not.