Fear Of The Dark Quotes & Sayings

Oh, we can populate the dark with horrors, even we who think ourselves informed and sure, believing nothing we cannot measure or weigh. I knew beyond all doubt that the dark things crowding in on me either did not exist or were not dangerous to me, and still I was afraid. I thought how terrible the nights must have been in a time when men knew the things were there and were deadly. But no, that's wrong. If I knew they were there, I would have weapons against them, charms, prayers, some kind of alliance with forces equally strong but on my side. Knowing they were not there made me defenseless against them and perhaps more afraid. — John Steinbeck

The tunnel is lit at long intervals, so in the dark space between each dim lamp, I fear that I am lost until a shoulder bumps mine. In the circles of light I am safe again. — Veronica Roth

They lurk in the cold and dark.Hungry and,wicked,they wait for their one chance to devour the weak on Sorry Night.Then the vours feast on a banquet of fear.Your fear.They steal your soul but your body remains.No one knows the difference. — Simon Holt

Not Exactly True That skin hate is dead. There will never be color blindness in a culture of fear. But when you live afraid of your neighbor, the monster you should most walk in terror of thrives. It starts as a little thing, small enough to burrow into your pores, take up excruciating residence in the dark recesses of your brain. Its name is paranoia, and it spreads like an oil spill, there in the shadows, chokes your humanity. Threatens your soul. — Ellen Hopkins

She wishes her grandmother had not been so protective, and that she understood better what passes between a man and woman. As it is, she simply enjoys the feelings and wonders if they are what lightning is made of, for everything comes back to the weather. Tears like rain. Smiles like the sun. Hair as dry as sand and fear like the dark ocean. — Sara Sheridan

He reached for the door handle. Fear nestled into his throat, but he did not stop. He pulled the handle, opened the door, and stepped out. It was dark. The streetlights in Soho were nearly worthless, like pen beams in a black hole. Lights drifting out from nearby windows provided more of an eerie kindle than real illumination. There were plastic garbage bags out on the street. Most had been torn open; the odor of spoiled food wafted through the air. The van slowly cruised toward him. A man stepped out from a doorway and approached without hesitation. The man wore a black turtleneck under a black overcoat. He pointed a gun at Myron. The van stopped, and the side door slid open. "Get in, asshole," the man with the gun said. Myron pointed at himself. "You talking to me?" "Now, asshole. Haul ass." "Is that a turtleneck or a dickey?" The man with the gun moved closer. "I said, now. — Harlan Coben

I've had stupid teachers, lazy teachers, boring teachers, teachers who were teachers because their parents were and they hadn't the imagination to think of anything else, teachers who were teachers because of cowardice, because of fear, because of the holidays, because of the pensions, because they were never called to account, never had to actually be any good, ones who could not survive in any other profession, who were not aware they had trod on butterflies. But none of those compared to Mr Maurice Crossan. He was the one who first stamped on my brother's soul. He was dark, as they say here. For those who want more of him visit the dark character of Orlick Dolge in Great Expectations and cross that with a ginger-headed weasel. — Niall Williams

It is yin and yang. Light is the left hand of darkness ... how did it go? Light, dark. Fear, courage. Cold, warmth. Female, male. It is yourself ... both and one. A shadow on snow. — Ursula K. Le Guin

There are corners in the world that are too dark to see, and there are edges that are sharper than they appear, ready to snag the unwary. There are those who do not fear the things they should, and there are those who would bargain with the devil herself for the sake of their greed.The world is made safe by a woman, yes, but it is a very big world. — E.K. Johnston

And my fear of failure has been lifelong and deep. If you are what you do- and I think my parents may have accidentally given me this idea- and you do poorly, what then? It's over; you're wiped out. All those prophecies you heard in the dark have come true, and people can see the real you, see what a schmendrick you are, what a fraud. — Anne Lamott

Having wandered some distance among gloomy rocks, I came to the entrance of a great cavern ... Two contrary emotions arose in me: fear and desire
fear of the threatening dark cavern, desire to see whether there were any marvelous things in it. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Probably one or two moments in your whole life you will hear a dark whispering spirit, a voice coming from the center of things. It will have blades for lips and will not stop until it speaks the one secret thing at the heart of it all. Kneeling on the floor, unable to stop shuddering, I heard it plainly. It said, You are unlovable ... — Sue Monk Kidd

I won't waste your time with the injuries of my childhood, with my loneliness, or the fear and sadness of the years I spent inside the bitter capsule of my parents' marriage, under the reign of my father's rage, after all, who isn't a survivor from the wreck of a childhood? I have no desire to describe mine; I only want to say that in order to survive the dark and often terrifying passage of my life I came to believe certain things about myself. — Nicole Krauss

Shut up," I snapped. "This is not the time. What part of this situation seems like a joke to you?"
Lohka pulled up his knees, giving a feeble, half-manic little laugh. "Oh, maybe just the idea that some soul-devouring being of chaos could be waiting anywhere to finish destroying my life," he said. "That's kind of hilarious, you know. Have you ever had a soul-devouring being of chaos hunting you down so it could finish eating you?"
"No," I said. "I'm sorry, Lohka."
"That's nice," he muttered.
"What about the part where this soul-devouring being of chaos seems to have a taste for me at the moment?" Zhabyr asked. "Can we worry about that, now? Because I kind of already am. — J. Leigh Bralick

Man torturing man is a fiend beyond description. You turn a corner in the dark and there he is. You congeal into a bundle of inanimate fear. You become the very soul of anesthesia. But there is no escaping him. It is your turn now ... — Henry Miller

But a smell shivered him awake.
It was a scent as old as the world. It was a hundred aromas of a thousand places. It was the tang of pine needles. It was the musk of sex. It was the muscular rot of mushrooms. It was the spice of oak. Meaty and redolent of soil and bark and herb. It was bats and husks and burrows and moss. It was solid and alive - so alive! And it was close.
The vapors invaded Nicholas' nostrils and his hair rose to their roots. His eyes were as heavy as manhole covers, but he opened them. Through the dying calm inside him snaked a tremble of fear.
The trees themselves seemed tense, waiting. The moonlight was a hard shell, sharp and ready to ready be struck and to ring like steel.
A shadow moved.
It poured like oil from between the tall trees and flowed across dark sandy dirt, lengthening into the middle of the ring. Trees seem to bend toward it, spellbound. A long, long shadow ... — Stephen M. Irwin

Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate their power. Even literacy they fear, for the written word is another channel of communication that might cause their enemies to become united. Their weapons are keen-honed, and they use them with skill. They will press the battle upon the world when their interests are threatened, and the violence which follows will last until the structure of society as it now exists is leveled to rubble, and a new society emerges. I am sorry. But that is how I see it. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

When at even-tide the child of want lies down, dirty and hungry, in his squalid home, and hears of prince and princess and fabled gold, then in the dark hovel lighted by its dim flickering candle, his mind springs free from its bonds of poverty and misery and walks in fresh beauty and glowing raiment, strong beyond all fear of hindrance, through that fairy realm where all is possible. — Rabindranath Tagore

Bow down and pray in fear and trembling, go way back in the dark afraid; or work harder and harder; or stumble and learn; or raise up your fist and strike-but once the idea comes into your head you'll never be the same again. Oh, test tube of life! Crucible of the South, find the right powder and you'll never be the same again-the cotton will blaze and the cabins will burn and the chains will be broken and men, all of a sudden, will shakes hands, black men and white men, like steel meeting steel! — Langston Hughes

Heroes are people who face down their fears. It is that simple. A child afraid of the dark who one day blows out the candle; a women terrified of the pain of childbirth who says, 'It is time to become a mother'. Heroism does not always live on the battlefield. — David Gemmell

For she was really too lovely
too formidably lovely. I was used by now to mere unadjectived loveliness, the kind that youth and spirits hang like a rosy veil over commonplace features, an average outline and a pointless merriment. But this was something calculated, accomplished, finished
and just a little worn. It frightened me with my first glimpse of the infinity of beauty and the multiplicity of her pit-falls. What! There were women who need not fear crow's-feet, were more beautiful for being pale, could let a silver hair or two show among the dark, and their eyes brood inwardly while they smiled and chatted? but then no young man was safe for a moment! But then the world I had hitherto known had been only a warm pink nursery, while this new one was a place of darkness, perils and enchantments ... — Edith Wharton

Assumptions can blind you; hypotheses can guide you. Good negotiators expect surprises; great negotiators reveal the surprises. Negotiation should be seen as a process of discovery. If you think you're too smart to discover anything new, then you will be a terrible negotiator. Until you know who or what you are dealing with, you are actually in the dark and should proceed with caution. Listening well does not come easily to most. By truly listening, you will disarm your opponent, giving them a sense of calm and a feeling of safety. Talking about wants gives us an illusion of control; needs are required to survive and make us feel vulnerable. The biggest mistake a negotiator can make is to rush things. By slowing down the process, you are able to calm down the situation. A soothing but confident voice helps in confrontational situations. Mirroring relies on the fact that we fear what's different and are drawn to what's similar. — Book Summary

For a long time, I did not move from the dark, wood-panelled hall. I wanted company, and I had none, lights and warmth and a strong drink inside me, I needed reassurance. But, more than anything else, I needed an explanation. It is remarkable how powerful a force simple curiosity can be. I had never realized that before now. In spite of my intense fear and sense of shock, I was consumed with the desire to find out exactly who it was that I had seen, and how, I could not rest until I had settled the business, for all that, while out there, I had not dared to stay and make any investigations. — Susan Hill

Power is not a thing to be owned. But if you believe that it is such a thing, losing it becomes a possibility to fear. That fear, I think, is one reason for the dark projections of a catastrophic future that are so widespread, in our dual society. The present powerful, being committed to polarization, expect that any new deal will overturn the one that set them in authority; that the last shall be first and the first last, role reversal everywhere, men as slaves, women as masters, in a revolution of contradiction. — Elizabeth Janeway

Dark as is this hour, there is shining through the heavy overcast of fear and anger the solemn and wonderful image of the Son of God, the Savior of the World, the Prince of Peace, the exemplar of universal love, and it is to Him that we look in these circumstances. It was He who gave His life that all might enjoy eternal life — Gordon B. Hinckley

I sing your restless longing for the statue, your fear of the feelings that await you in the street. I sing the small sea siren who sings to you, riding her bicycle of corals and conches. But above all I sing a common thought that joins us in the dark and golden hours. The light that blinds our eyes is not art. Rather it is love, friendship, crossed swords. — Federico Garcia Lorca

The unknown is the hardest obstacle of all. When we don't know what to expect, we lose the feeling of control. This is what really scares us the most - the loss of control. Kids are afraid of the dark because they don't know what might be hiding from sight. Similarly, when we don't know what to expect at the end of the rope, we feel the need to pull away from it. It is this fear of the unknown that stops our progress. Over — Jill Morgenthaler

I adore my mother, but I fear for her. She seems helpless, caught in the vortex of my father's dark moods and unpredictable behavior. I try never to displease her. I love the scent of Juicy Fruit gum on her breath and the hint of Joy perfume on her neck, the crisp crinkle of her hair stiff with aerosol spray and the chipped pink polish on her nails. — Kristen Iversen

Nixon represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise. — Hunter S. Thompson

But...what makes you Nathan--what makes you so special--is that you are both White Witch and Black Witch, both dark and full of light. That's what I love about you. What I've always loved. And I love you still, Nathan, and I know I always will. But you're changing. And now...now what I fear is that you'll get the amulet and you'll hone the Gifts you took from your father. You'll be invulnerable and you'll kill more people, many, many more people. I fear you won't be able to stop and you'll lose yourself completely. And then I'll come to dread you too. — Sally Green

Before the Battle:
Music of whispering trees
Hushed by the broad-winged breeze
Where shaken water gleams;
And evening radiance falling
With reedy bird-notes calling.
O bear me safe through dark, you low-voiced streams.
I have no need to pray
That fear may pass away;
I scorn the growl and rumble of the fight
That summons me from cool
Silence of marsh and pool,
And yellow lilies islanded in light.
O river of stars and shadows, lead me through the night. — Siegfried Sassoon

Fear of the self... of both what we show the world on the outside and that which we know, ourselves, to truly be on the inside, can be a paralyzing notion. — Joe Harris

Sometimes being crazy is a demon. And sometimes the demon is me. And I visit quiet sidewalks and loud parties and dark movies, and a small demon looks out at the world with me. Sometimes it sleeps. Sometimes it plays. Sometimes it laughs with me. Sometimes it tries to kill me. But it's always with me. I suppose we're all possessed in some way. Some of us with dependence on pills or wine. Others through sex or gambling. Some of us through self-destruction or anger or fear. And some of us just carry around our tiny demon as he wreaks havoc in our mind, tearing open old dusty trunks of bad memories and leaving the remnants spread everywhere. Wearing the skins of people we've hurt. Wearing the skins of people we've loved. And sometimes, when it's worst, wearing our skins. — Jenny Lawson

Moon and Sea
You are the moon, dear love, and I the sea:
The tide of hope swells high within my breast,
And hides the rough dark rocks of life's unrest
When your fond eyes smile near in perigee.
But when that loving face is turned from me,
Low falls the tide, and the grim rocks appear,
And earth's dim coast-line seems a thing to fear.
You are the moon, dear one, and I the sea. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox

There's a reason why anger, fear, and hatred are paths to the dark side: they all spring from a single source - the same source as a certain flavor of love. A dangerously sweet, addictive flavor. — Matthew Stover

The pain-body, which is the dark shadow cast by the ego, is actually afraid of the light of your consciousness. It is afraid of being found out. Its survival depends on your unconscious identification with it, as well as on your unconscious fear of facing the pain that lives in you. But if you don't face it, if you don't bring the light of your consciousness into the pain, you will be forced to relive it again and again. — Eckhart Tolle

By the middle of 2011, roughly 30 percent of all stock market trades occurred off the public exchanges, most of them in dark pools. The appeal of these dark pools - said the Wall Street banks - was that investors could expose their big stock market orders without fear that those orders would be exploited. — Michael Lewis

Do not fear the dark for you are never truly alone. Embrace your' fear for it will bring you strength in your' greatest time of need. — Lyn Gibson

Children are instinctually afraid of closets in the dark of night, a portent of evil lurking in the background of shadows. It isn't an irrational fear, for monsters come from closets. It's not something easily forgotten, or a fate yet known. As young adults, some of them venture into their closets, some come out. Sean danced with his. — Zea Miller

One of my own stray childhood fears had been to wonder what a whale might feel like had it been born and bred in captivity, then released into the wild-into its ancestral sea-its limited world instantly blowing up when cast into the unknowable depths, seeing strange fish and tasting new waters, not even having a concept of depth, not knowing the language of any whale pods it might meet. It was my fear of a world that would expand suddenly, violently, and without rules or laws: bubbles and seaweed and storms and frightening volumes of dark blue that never end — Douglas Coupland

His fingers caressed the column of my tense throat. I shivered in fear. I hated not being able to see what was happening, it forced me to feel everything. — C.J. Roberts

We, and I mean humans, are meaning makers. We do not discover the meanings of mysterious things, we invent them. We make meanings because meaninglessness terrifies us above all things. More than snakes, even. More than falling, or the dark. We trick ourselves into seeing meanings in things, when in fact all we are doing is grafting our meanings onto the universe to comfort ourselves. We gild the chaos of the universe with our symbols. To admit that something is meaningless is just like falling backward into darkness. (p184) — Benjamin Hale

If you expose what it is that we're doing, if you inform your fellow citizens about all the things that we're doing in the dark, we will destroy you. This is what their spate of prosecutions of whistleblowers have [sic] been about. It's what trying to threaten journalists, to criminalize what they do, is about. It's to create a climate of fear, so that nobody will bring accountability to them.
It's not going to work. I think it's starting to backfire, because it shows their true character and exactly why they can't be trusted to operate with power in secret. And we're certainly not going to be deterred by it in any way. The people who are going to be investigated are not the people reporting on this, but are people like Dianne Feinstein and her friends in the National Security Agency, who need investigation and transparency for all the things that they've been doing. — Glenn Greenwald

Oh, this faithless world! Someone must deliver them. You. If not you, who? You have been saved for a reason. Show them the old demons. Remind them of their fear. Apathy is death. Without darkness, there is no light. Without evil, there is no good. Make them choose. Dark or light. Where is the fear? Where are the heroes? If not now, when? — Dan Brown

I noticed Justus had changed into a tight black shirt. I wondered if he bought it a size small intentionally to attract women, or if the fabric had simply shrunk in fear of him. Did — Dannika Dark

One sometimes clings tightly to pain, to bitter home-sickness and bitter regret, but one forgets one's guilt; in vain, you might think back to the beginning (who led me this far?). If only you were allowed to accuse once more, turn to others once more, love once more! You plunge into the wide, ocean-like hallucination, you have faith and pray, and forget your dark fear when you gaze into the face of your beloved. But how should one fight it? — Annemarie Schwarzenbach

It's the attitude about life, man. Looking at the light instead of the dark. Looking at love instead of fear. — Quincy Jones

Longche willed himself to change into his true vampire form. As the helpless vampire watched the transformation, it started screaming. It was still screaming when Longche's rows of razor-sharp teeth sank into its throat. It had been thousands of years since he had drunk the blood of vampires. With each creature he consumed, he could feel himself growing stronger.
Growing stronger - and growing closer to the Dark Mother, who was waiting to exact a terrible revenge upon him. — Alan Kinross

The bravest person I know is afraid of the dark. She sleeps with a night lamp always, but if her friends are threatened? She suddenly thinks she's a bear twelve feet tall and attacks whoever scared her friends. — Tamora Pierce

The Loneliness One dare not sound
And would as soon surmise AS in its Grave go plumbing To ascertain the size
The Loneliness whose worst alarm Is lest itself should see
And perish from before itself For just a scrutiny
The Horror not to be surveyed
But skirted in the Dark
With Consciousness suspended
And Being under Lock
I fear me this
is Loneliness
The Maker of the soul Its Caverns and its Corridors Illuminate
or seal — Emily Dickinson

It's the fear of what's in the dark that scares us, not the dark itself. Thanks, ancient Chinese philosophers. You guys are the best. And the deadest. But mostly the best. Jack's — Sara Wolf

You nightmare, gasped and jerk up all at once where I bolt too, hand flown to rest on his kidneys. Confused bedclothes, the sulphurous dark. Worse for you, the same war, another battle so undoing that in daylight you won't admit it, nothing, nothing, avert and work. His purple-circled eyes could have been anywhere. She sets a pan, quietly, of biscuits. Bring me morning's water bucket, then turn wordless out. Finished enough, now I will out too, Mr. Whitman in scandalous hand with a leaf to hold my place. Rivering. Greening. It all stops, water too silty and feet booted, she crooks in a moss-tree and is lost, forgets even to ask for moccasins. I have wrapped fear into linen and hoped it into lavender, saved for funerary. At noon he looks; returns, admits. Across the tablecloth can ask Where did you come from. — JSA Lowe

Truth

And if sun comes
How shall we greet him?
Shall we not dread him,
Shall we not fear him
After so lengthy a
Session with shade?

Though we have wept for him,
Though we have prayed
All through the night-years -
What if we wake one shimmering morning to
Hear the fierce hammering
Of his firm knuckles
Hard on the door?

Shall we not shudder? -
Shall we not flee
Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter
Of the familiar
Propitious haze?

Sweet is it, sweet is it
To sleep in the coolness
Of snug unawareness.

The dark hangs heavily
Over the eyes. — Gwendolyn Brooks

Something about the time of year depressed him deeply. Overcast skies and cutting wind, leaves falling, dusk falling, dark too soon, night flying down before you are ready. It's a terror. It's a bareness of the soul. He hears the rustle of nuns. Here comes winter in the bone. We've set it loose on the land. There must be some song or poem, some folk magic we can use to ease this fear. Skelly Bone Pete. Here it is in the landscape and sky. We've set it loose. We've opened up the ground and here it is. He took Interstate 45 south. He didn't want them to kill Leon. He felt a saturating sense of death, a dread in the soft filling of his bones, the suckable part, approaching Galveston now. — Don DeLillo

Most fears are basic: fear of the dark, fear of going down in the basement, fear of weird sounds, fear that somebody is waiting for you in your closet. Those kinds of things stay with you no matter what age. — R.L. Stine

Perhaps because we knew we couldn't win against their might we turned on each other, riven by petty jealousies, split apart by treachery, our lives a dark tangle of fear. Victims often attack one another, they become chickens in a pen, bickering, frenzied. We did the same. Not only were our people besieged by the Romans but they were at war with each other. The priests were deferential, siding with Rome, and those who opposed them were said to be robbers and thugs, my father and his friends among them. Taxes were so high the poor could no longer feed their children, while those who allied themselves with Rome had prospered and grown rich. People gave testimony against their own neighbors; they stole from each other and locked their doors to those in need. The more suspicious we were of each other, the more we were defeated, split into feuding mobs when in fact we were one, the sons and daughters of the kingdom of Israel, believers in Adonai. — Alice Hoffman

Late-Flowering Lust

My head is bald, my breath is bad,
Unshaven is my chin,
I have not now the joys I had
When I was young in sin.
I run my fingers down your dress
With brandy-certain aim
And you respond to my caress
And maybe feel the same.
But I've a picture of my own
On this reunion night,
Wherein two skeletons are shewn
To hold each other tight;
Dark sockets look on emptiness
Which once was loving-eyed,
The mouth that opens for a kiss
Has got no tongue inside.
I cling to you inflamed with fear
As now you cling to me,
I feel how frail you are my dear
And wonder what will be--
A week? or twenty years remain?
And then--what kind of death?
A losing fight with frightful pain
Or a gasping fight for breath?
Too long we let our bodies cling,
We cannot hide disgust
At all the thoughts that in us spring
From this late-flowering lust. — John Betjeman

Well, when the fear of death seizes you - when the dark thoughts come - you stare the darkness right back, and you tell it, 'I will not listen to you, for I am infinite Batmans. — Brandon Sanderson

Fred, in the light from the window above, looked for a moment like a newly hatched chick, with his twitchy little head and blinking dark eyes and face open to the world. Birdie felt something like fear then, something ragged and dark lurking just out of sight. Fred could die just like Eleanor did, just like the Wallace boy who'd gone to bed with a headache and died in the night when a blood vessel exploded in his brain. The slimmest margin separated life from not-life. Pastor Hardy boomed on and on. "We must be overcomers — Rae Meadows

Was it Roosevelt who said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"? But he was never locked in a store in the dark, pumped full of adrenaline, covered in motor oil, with dozens of eager monsters banging on the gate six feet away, determined to kill him. I'm sure he would've been afraid. Fucking afraid. — Manel Loureiro

Quitting my day job and starting my life as a writer was a tremendous risk. It was a fool's leap, a shot in the dark. But anything of any value in our lives, whether that be a career, a work of art, a relationship, will always start with such a leap. And in order to be able to make it you have to put aside the fear of failing and the desire of succeeding. ( ... ) Because things that we do without lust of result are the purest actions that we shall ever take. — Alan Moore

When the years have all passed, there will gape the uncomfortable and unpredictable dark void of death, and into this I shall at last fall headlong, down and down and down, and the prospect of that fall, that uprooting, that rending apart of body and spirit, that taking off into so blank an unknown, drowns me in mortal fear and mortal grief. After all, life, for all its agonies of despair and loss and guilt, is exciting and beautiful, amusing and artful and endearing, full of liking and of love, at times a poem and a high adventure, at times noble and at times very gay; and whatever (if anything) is to come after it, we shall not have this life again. — Rose Macaulay

And I couldn't take my eyes off Pete. He ate dinner like he always did, in three or four huge, whoofing bites, before heading back out front to his cone of warmth, his coffee, his cigarettes, and ghostly tunes piping from his little transistor radio. And most important, to whatever thoughts drowned out the voices of his own family saying "hello" and "happy holidays."
I watched him because I couldn't believe that could be anyone's comfortable horizon. A tiny porch on a dark corner near a highway. We lucked out living on a planet made thrilling by billions of years of chance, catastrophe, miracles, and disaster, and he'd rejected it. You're offered the world every morning when you open your eyes. I was beginning to see Pete as a representative of all the people who shut that out, through cynicism, religion, fear, greed, or ritual. — Patton Oswalt

Max can't hear or speak, but he communicates okay. He wasn't programmed for fear - whoever rolled the genetic dice left that out too. If Mama asked Max to deliver a package to the Devil, Max would go straight to Hell. Unlike others of my acquaintance who had made that particular trip, I had complete confidence that Max would come back. Max the Silent is one tough boy. In fact, he's so infamous that one time over in night court when he was being arraigned for attempted murder, nobody even laughed when the judge told him that he had the right to remain silent. They all knew that Max never attempted to murder anyone. — Andrew Vachss

I'd still thought that everything I thought about that night-the shame, the fear-would fade in time. But that hadn't happened. Instead, the things that I remembered, these little details, seemed to grow stronger, to the point where I could feel their weight in my chest. Nothing, however stuck with me more than the memory of stepping into that dark room and what I found there, and how the light then took that nightmare and made it real. — Sarah Dessen

On the blank leaf glued to the inner back cover I drew the double curve within the circle, and blacked the yin half of the symbol, then pushed it back to my companion. 'Do you know that sign?'
He looked at it a long time with a strange look, but he said, 'No.'
'It's found on Earth, and on Hain-Davenant, and on Chiffewar. It is yin and yang. Light is the left hand of darkness ... how did it go? Light, dark. Fear, courage. Cold, warmth. Female, male. It is yourself, Therem. Both and one. A shadow on snow.' — Ursula K. Le Guin

You realize I had half my guard out searching for you?" Eddard Stark said when they were alone. "Septa Mordane is beside herself with fear. She's in the sept praying for your safe return. Arya, you know you are never to go beyond the castle gates without my leave."
"I didn't go out the gates," she blurted. "Well, I didn't mean to. I was down in the dungeons, only they turned into this tunnel. It was all dark, and I didn't have a torch or a candle to see by, so I had to follow. I couldn't go back the way I came on account of the monsters. Father, they were talking about killing you! Not the monsters, the two men. They didn't see me, I was being still as stone and quiet as a shadow, but I heard them. They said you had a book and a bastard and if one Hand could die, why not a second? Is that the book? Jon's the bastard, I bet. — George R R Martin

With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself - one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad. It was invested with the woe of unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely stirred. When he moaned and sobbed, it was with the pain of living that was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear and mystery of the cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery. — Jack London

This perpetual fear, always accompanying mankind in the ignorance of causes, as it were in the dark, must needs have for object something. And therefore when there is nothing to be seen, there is nothing to accuse, either of their good, or evil fortune, but some power, or agent invisible: in which sense perhaps it was, that some of the old poets said, that the gods were at first created by human fear: which spoken of the gods, that is to say, of the many gods of the Gentiles, is very true. — Christopher Hitchens

She should be more frightened herself, she knew. She was only ten, a skinny girl on a stolen horse with a dark forest ahead of her and men behind who would gladly cut off her feet. Yet somehow she felt calmer than ever had in Harrenhal. The rain had washed the guard's blood off her fingers, she wore a sword across her back, wolves were prowling through the dark like lean grey shadows, and Arya Stark was unafraid. Fear cuts deeper than swords, she whispered under her breath, the words that Syrio Forel had taught her, and Jaqen's words too, valar morghulis. — George R R Martin

Ildiko clutched his arm, unwilling to have him leave her side. "I enjoy your touch, Brishen."

The stiffness eased from his shoulders. He gave her a wry look and pressed his palm to the pale expanse of skin just below her collarbones. His hand rose and fell in quick time to her breathing. "I believe you, but this tells me you fear it as well."

She winced. "Your teeth are so...sharp."

"They are, but I'm not careless, wife. And if, for some unfathomable reason, I accidently bite you, you're welcome to bite me back."

His attempt at humor worked, and Ildiko chuckled. "Brishen - " She offered him a toothy grin. "These wouldn't do much damage."

He traced the line of her collarbones with the rough pads of his fingers, their dark claws a whisper of movement across her flesh. "You have obviously never been badly bitten by a horse. — Grace Draven

He was thinking about men like his Uncle Ted, a Cornishman to his bones, who lived and would die in St. Mawes, part of the fabric of the place, remembered as long as there were locals, beaming out of fading photographs of the Life Boat on pub walls. When Ted died - and Strike hoped it would be twenty, thirty years hence - they would mourn him as the unknown Barrovian Grammar boy was being mourned: with drink, with tears, but in celebration that he had been given to them. What had dark, hulking Brockbank, child rapist, and fox-haired Laing, wife-torturer, left behind in the towns of their birth? Shudders of relief that they had gone, fear that they had returned, a trail of broken people and bad memories. — Robert Galbraith

You might be afraid of the dark, but the dark is not afraid of you. That's why the dark is always close by. — Lemony Snicket

TEN GUIDEPOSTS FOR WHOLEHEARTED LIVING 1. Cultivating authenticity: letting go of what people think 2. Cultivating self-compassion: letting go of perfectionism 3. Cultivating a resilient spirit: letting go of numbing and powerlessness 4. Cultivating gratitude and joy: letting go of scarcity and fear of the dark 5. Cultivating intuition and trusting faith: letting go of the need for certainty 6. Cultivating creativity: letting go of comparison 7. Cultivating play and rest: letting go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth 8. Cultivating calm and stillness: letting go of anxiety as a lifestyle 9. Cultivating meaningful work: letting go of self-doubt and "supposed to" 10. Cultivating laughter, song, and dance: letting go of being cool and "always in control — Brene Brown

Forever wasn't pain and grief.
Forever wasn't a problem.
Forever was my heartbeat and it was the hope tomorrow held. Forever was the glistening silver lining of every dark cloud, no matter how heavy and thick it was. Forever was knowing moments of weakness didn't equate to an eternityof them.Forever was knowing that I was strong.Forever was the fire breathing dragon inside me that had shed the fear like a snake shedding skin. Forever was simply a promise of more. Forever was a work in progress. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

He supposed he was one of those unfortunates born with a great capacity for suffering ... He opened his eyes a moment and they were dark with fear, for only one race was run as yet and there might be many others ... Then his newborn courage came back to him and he accepted his suffering as the price he must pay for the gift of creation that was his. And suffering, he had discovered, could be the gateway to renewal, than which no more glorious experience can be man's on earth. — Elizabeth Goudge

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat held for it by a row of ancient trees; you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight, one journeying to heaven, one that falls; and leave you, not at home in either one, not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses, not calling to eternity with the passion of what becomes a star each night, and rises; and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel) your life, with its immensity and fear, so that, now bounded, now immeasurable, it is alternately stone in you and star. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Alone, her soul destroyed and her heart bereft and empty, the Lady Ninnia touched her amulet and closed her eyes. "No," she breathed, "I was wrong. This time, my wisdom has failed me. Our daughter is not ready. To become the Handmaiden of Orion, one must know terrible grief in order to learn compassion." She gazed after her husband and shook her head sorrowfully. "Even the deaths of us, her parents, are not, I fear, enough. May she find what she needs upon that dark and deadly road upon which I have sent her. My poor, poor child - farewell. — Robin Jarvis

I look down past the stars to a terrifying darkness. I seem to recognize the place, but it's impossible. "Accident," I whisper. I will fall. I seem to desire the fall, and though I fight it with all my will I know in advance I can't win. Standing baffled, quaking with fear, three feet from the edge of a nightmare cliff, I find myself, incredibly, moving towards it. I look down, down, into bottomless blackness, feeling the dark power moving in me like an ocean current, some monster inside me, deep sea wonder, dread night monarch astir in his cave, moving me slowly to my voluntary tumble into death. — John Gardner

When fears are screaming in your ears, try to hear the whispers of your faith and run into that dark path. That is how you reach the paradise. — Akshay Vasu

... especially the young ones, come into the canyon for the first time, quiet as deer, some of them, coming to your hand for salt: their dark eyes wide and gleaming with the wonder and the fear we had all felt at seeing for the first time life as our dreams had always imagined it ... at seeing so many people with whom they could fall in love. The old enchantment composed of lights, music, people was transfixing them for the first time, and it made their faces even more touching. — Andrew Holleran

It was dusk - winter dusk. Snow lay white and shining over the pleated hills, and icicles hung from the forest trees. Snow lay piled on the dark road across Willoughby Wold, but from dawn men had been clearing it with brooms and shovels. There were hundreds of them at work, wrapped in sacking because of the bitter cold, and keeping together in groups for fear of the wolves, grown savage and reckless from hunger. — Joan Aiken

Propelled by fear or hatred, even a Jedi can pass beyond the constraints of the Order's teachings and discover power of a more profound sort. But no Jedi who arrives at that place, who has risen above his or her allegiance to peace and justice, who kills in anger or out of desire, can lay real claim to the dark side of the Force. Their attempts to convince themselves that they fell to the dark side, or that the dark side compelled their actions, are nothing more than pitiful rationalizations. That is why the Sith embrace the dark from the start, focusing on the acquistion of power. We make no excuses. The actions of a Sith begin from the self and flow outward. We stalk the Force like hunters, rather than surrender like prey to its enigmatic whims. — James Luceno

I find no peace, and all my war is done,
I fear and hope; I burn and freeze like ice;
I fly above the wind yet can I not arise;
And naught I have and all the world I seize on.
That looseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison,
And holdeth me not, yet can I scape nowise;
Nor letteth me live nor die at my devise,
And yet of death it giveth none occasion.
Without eyen I see, and without tongue I plain;
I desire to perish, and yet I ask health;
I love another, and thus I hate myself;
I feed me in sorrow, and laugh in all my pain.
Likewise displeaseth me both death and life
And my delight is causer of this strife. — Thomas Wyatt

If you're in the exorcism business, you must know a lot about demons." "Qliphoth," he says. "What?" "It's the proper word for what you call a demon. A demon is a bogeyman, an irrational entity representing fear in the collective unconscious. The Qliphoth are the castoffs of a greater entity. The old gods. They're dumb and their lack of intelligence makes them pure evil." "Okay, Daniel Webster. What happened at the exorcism?" Traven takes a breath and stares at his hands for a minute. "You should know that I don't follow the Church's standard exorcism rites. For instance, I seldom speak Latin. If Qliphoth really are lost fragments of the Angra Om Ya, the older dark gods, they're part of creatures millions of years old. Why would Latin have any effect on them? — Richard Kadrey

Once you let in the word, once you allow it to take root, it will spread like a mold through all of your corners and dark spaces - and with it, the questions, the shivery, splintered fears, enough to keep you permanently awake. — Lauren Oliver

All about us were people. Perhaps a hundred. Men. Experience had taught me that humans were cruelest when segregated by sex, and the cold feeling in the pit of my stomach became led. What had I let myself in for? — C.S. Friedman

Then a dark shape would glide across the star-covered sky, everyone would look up and the laughter would stop. It wasn't exactly what you'd call fear, rather a strange sadness
a sadness that had nothing human about it any more, for it lacked both courage and hope. This was how animals waited to die. It was the way fish caught in a net watch the shadow of the fisherman moving back and forth above them. — Irene Nemirovsky

I can't bear the thought of oblivion, Asriel," she continued. "Sooner anything than that. I used to think pain would be worse - to be tortured forever - I thought that must be worse . . . But as long as you were conscious, it would be better, wouldn't it? Better than feeling nothing, just going into the dark, everything going out forever and ever? — Philip Pullman

We have not fully recovered from the Dark Ages: the insecurity that excites greed, the fear that fosters cruelty, the poverty that breeds filth and ignorance, the filth that generates disease, the ignorance that begets credulity, superstition, occultism - these still survive amongst us; and the dogmatism that festers into intolerance and Inquisitions only awaits opportunity or permission to oppress, kill, ravage, and destroy. In this sense modernity is a cloak put upon medievalism, which secretly remains; and in every generation civilization is the laborious product and precarious obligating privilege of an engulfed minority. The — Will Durant

I had learned early to assume something dark and lethal hidden at the heart of anything I loved. When I couldn't find it, I responded, bewildered and wary, in the only way I knew how: by planting it there myself. — Tana French

Fear is about things that you can't control. The future or the dark, or someone trying to kill you. You don't get scared of yourself because you always know what you're going to do. — Dan Wells

Some people ask why people would go into a dark room to be scared. I say they are already scared, and they need to have that fear manipulated and massaged. I think of horror movies as the disturbed dreams of a society. — Wes Craven

Maxine," Grant said, but I barely heard him. I was lost in that vision, in those emotions - the pain, and hunger for pain, forming the root of so much
agonized rage.
" 'Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate,'" I muttered.
"Yoda, from Star Wars?"
" 'Hate leads to suffering.'" I met his gaze. "Yoda knows his shit, man."
Grant's mouth crooked in a gentle smile. — Marjorie M. Liu

Fortunately a human being can comprehend only a certain degree of unhappiness; anything beyond it destroys him or leaves him cold. There are situations in which fear and hope become one and the same, cancel one another out, and lose themselves in a dark insensateness. How else could we know the people we love best to be in continual danger and yet go on with our daily lives as usual? — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

So, with the crash of artillery, in the dark, with hatred, and fear, and reckless daring, new Russia was being born. — John Reed

But then there were other times, like this, when he looked at Jem and saw no mark of illness on him, and wondered what it would be like in a world where Jem was not dying. And that did not bear thinking about either. It was a terrible black place in himself that the fear came from, a dark voice he could only silence with anger, risk, and pain. — Cassandra Clare

The underbelly of the human psyche, what is often referred to as our dark side, is the origin of every act of self-sabotage. Birthed out of shame, fear, and denial, it misdirects our good intentions and drives us to unthinkable acts of self-destruction and not-so-unbelievable acts of self-sabotage. — Debbie Ford

(It's a weird thing, depression. Even now, writing this with a good distance of fourteen years from my lowest point, I haven't fully escaped. You get over it, but at the same time you never get over it. It comes back in flashes, when you are tired or anxious or have been eating the wrong stuff, and catches you off guard. I woke up with it a few days ago, in fact. I felt its dark wisps around my head, that ominous life-is-fear feeling. But then, after a morning with the best five- and six-year-olds in the world, it subsided. it is now an aside. Something to put brackets around. Life lesson: the way out is never through yourself.) — Matt Haig

The real danger is found in Humanity's refusal to move beyond the trap of instinct and into the intellectual mind. The refusal to accept our health and the health of every other living thing on this planet must always come before profit. Whether it's the oil companies, pharmaceutical companies; or anyone else; we are not Gods no matter how much the New Agers like to proclaim it. In that path lies the rubble of the enemy of life, his Fallen God Bombers and his murderous dark medics. Out of that emanates the force of fear; fear of judgement, fear of difference and fear the other will bring you pain. — Cole J. Davis