Quotes About Fear

If I'd been older I would've asked what it was right away, but I didn't because I wanted to postpone the moment when I would know what it was. In stories I'd read, I'd come across the words nameless dread. They'd just been words then, but now that's exactly what I felt.

By the time he got around to meaning it, the words had sounded fraudulent to him and he'd been afraid to pronounce them.

Reign of terror, they used to say, but terror does not exactly reign. Instead it paralyzes. Hence the unnatural quiet.

And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light.

When push comes to shove, only one's own nightmares are of any interest or significance.

Moira had power now, she'd been set loose, she'd set herself loose. She was now a loose woman. I think we found this frightening. Moira was like an elevator with open sides. She made us dizzy. Already we were losing the taste for freedom, already we were finding these walls secure. In the upper reaches of the atmosphere you'd come apart, you'd vaporize, there would be no pressure holding you together.

They say that a nightmare can frighten you to death, that your heart can literally stop. Will this bad dream kill me, one of these nights? Surely it will take more than that.

I know she's looking at me, the lopsided mouth smiling a little, the face closed and defiant. There is the same shame, the sick feeling in my body, the same knowledge of my own wrongness, awkwardness, weakness; the same wish to be loved; the same loneliness; the same fear. But these are not my own emotions any more. They are Cordelia's; as they always were.

She's afraid of men and it's simple, it's rational, she's afraid of men because men are frightening.

I did not give him a straight answer, because saying what you really want out loud brings bad luck, and then the good thing will never happen. It might not happen anyway, but just to make sure, you should be careful about saying what you want or even wanting anything, as you may be punished for it.

Moira had power now, she'd been set loose, she'd set herself loose. She was now a loose woman. I think we found this frightening.

Where there is an emptiness, the mind will obligingly fill it up. Fear is always at hand to supply any vacancies, as is curiosity.

To go through all that and give birth to a shredder: it wasn't a fine thought. We didn't know exactly what would happen to the babies that didn't get passed, that were declared Unbabies. But we knew they were put somewhere, quickly, away.

And if I talk to him, I'll say something wrong, give something away. I can feel it coming, a betrayal of myself.

I remember thinking when the girls were born, first one and then the other, that I should have had sons and not daughters. I didn't feel up to daughters, I didn't know how they worked. I must have been afraid of hating them. With sons I would have known what to do.

Each twinge, each murmur of slight pain, ripples of sloughed-off matter, swellings and diminishings of tissue, the droolings of the flesh, these are signs, these are the things I need to know about. Each month I watch for blood, fearfully, for when it comes it means failure. I have failed once again to fulfill the expectations of others, which have become my own.

Last week they shot a woman, right about here. She was a Martha. She was fumbling in her robe, for her pass, and they thought she was hunting for a bomb. They thought she was a man in disguise. There have been such incidents. Rita and Cora knew the woman. I heard them talking about it, in the kitchen. Doing their job, said Cora. Keeping us safe.

The worst of it was that those people out there-the fear, the suffering the wholesale death-did not really touch him. Crake used to say that Homo sapiens sapiens was not hard-wired to individuate other people in numbers above two hundred, the size of a primal tribe, and Jimmy would reduce that number to two.

Yes," she said in a voice squeaky with fright. She was younger and still attractive then; she hadn't yet allowed her body to engorge. I have noted since that some kinds of men like to bully beautiful women.

I am still a coward, still fearful; none of that has changed. But I turn and walk away from her. It's like stepping off a cliff, believing the air will hold you up. And it does. I see that I don't have to do what she says, and worse and better, I've never had to do what she says. I can do what I like.

I will press this, somewhere. Under the mattress. Leave it there, for the next woman, the one who comes after me, to find. But there's someone in the room, behind me. I

Yesterday I went to the doctor, to see about these dizzy spells. He told me that I have developed what used to be called a heart, as if healthy people didn't have one. It seems I will not after all keep on living forever, merely getting smaller and greyer and dustier, like Sibyl in her bottle. Having long ago whispered I want to die, I now realise that this wish will indeed be fulfilled, and sooner rather than later. No matter that I've changed my mind.

Five members of the heretical sect of Quakers have been arrested," he says, smiling blandly, "and more arrests are anticipated." Two of the Quakers appear onscreen, a man and a woman. They look terrified, but they're trying to preserve some dignity in front of the camera. The man has a large dark mark on his forehead; the woman's veil has been torn off, and her hair falls in strands over her face. Both of them are about fifty.

I had nightmares myself. Shall I describe on for you? No, I will not....When push comes to shove, only one's own nightmares are of any interest or significance. Last night I had a nightmare....You are of course fully in control of what you choose to read, and may pass over this dream of mine at will.