Quotes & Sayings About Fright

For me I have learned to enjoy everything, especially performing live, so much more. I used to get horrible stage fright when I was younger and today and just love to sing for anyone who still turns up at my shows! — Olivia Newton-John

I used to suffer from stage fright, which at times was an ordeal. I won't perform live again. I'm going to do some TV shows and videos but nothing else ... I don't like to travel too much or do concerts. I'm more of a studio and home girl. — Agnetha Faltskog

Be brave! Be strong! Be fearless! Once you have taken up the spiritual life, fight as long as there is any life in you. Even though you know you are going to be killed, fight till you "are killed." Don't die of fright. Die fighting. Don't go down till you are knocked down. — Swami Vivekananda

It's about focusing on the fight and not the fright. — Robin Roberts

I have horrible stage fright - you know how you go through the bi-polar stage fright thing? Then you go on drugs to get over the stage fright and perform, but then you're not funny at all. — Roseanne Barr

For 'Fright Night,' we really want to convey the fun attitude of the movie and show the intensity of Colin Farrell as a predator. He's not a brooding vampire - he's dark and dangerous. — Stacey Snider

You actually enjoyed that, didn't you? (Amanda)
Oh, hell yes! Did you see the look on their faces? Man, I love this car. (Kyrian)
(She looked up at the sky and implored divine aid.)
Dear God, please separate me from this maniac before I die of fright. (Amanda) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Beauty is frightening," they will tell you -

Lazily you will arrange

A Spanish shawl on your shoulders,

A red rose in your hair.


"Beauty is simple," they will tell you -

Clumsily with a motley shawl

You will cover a child up,

A red rose on the floor.


But, distractedly heeding

All the words sounding around you,

Sadly lost in thought

You will say about yourself:


'I am neither frightening nor simple;

I am not so frightening, that I would simply

Kill; I am not so simple

That I do not know how frightening life is.'

("For Anna Akhmatova") — Alexander Blok

They were terrified out of their wits, the devil knows why: they take you for a brigand and a spy. And the prosecutor has died of fright; the funeral is to-morrow. Won't you be there? — Nikolai Gogol

Everything he saw was unspeakably menacing and horrible; and whenever one of the organic entities appeared by its motions to be noticing him, he felt a stark, hideous fright which generally jolted him awake. — H.P. Lovecraft

I get stage fright with short stories. For me it feels like standup comedy: kill or die. I'm more confident when I begin a novel because I know I have space to fail. — Sefi Atta

I have big, big stage fright. — Andrea Bocelli

A turtle should take fright at the sound of a boiling pot. — Carol Kendall

Of course it does on opening night, but I've never had that devastating stage fright that some people get, but apparently, you can develop it. — Joan Collins

Good girls hold their heads high by daylight,
Their grace and their virtue soaring with kites,
While bad girls slink along in their shame-
Everyone stares at them, everyone blames.
But those bad girls sleep soundly at night,
Ne'er do their consciences wake them in a fright,
While our good girls toss and they turn-
They lay awake for those who will burn. — Anna Godbersen

Art's the biggest vanity: the assumption that one's view of peace or fright or beauty is permanently communicable. — Ned Rorem

Fame: an embalmer trembling with stage fright. — H.L. Mencken

Anyway, said Robert, they got a big fright. After that they started dropping pellets in the water and digging latrines and spraying for flies and bringing buckets of soap. But do you think they do it because they love us? Not a hope. They prefer it that we live because we look too terrible when we get sick and die. If we grew thin and turned into paper and then into ash and floated away, they wouldn't give a stuff for us. They just don't want to get upset. They want to go to sleep feeling good. — J.M. Coetzee

It's such a relief after all these years to learn that you recovered from your fright," he said in a low voice, giving my hand a squeeze, "and that you grew up so pretty!"
"Were you worried?" I asked, touched.
"Yes. What were you, eleven? Twelve? At that age we're all gawky, and the outcome is always in doubt. — Rachel Hartman

I had serious performance stage fright. I kept my singing to the confines of my shower and car, while doing the dishes, and in my basement, but I would burst out crying if anyone asked me to sing. — Michelle Chamuel

Wednesday, March 23 I know now that I love Clarimonda. That she has entered into the very fiber of my being. It may be that the loves of other men are different. But does there exist one head, one ear, one hand that is exactly like hundreds of millions of others? There are always differences, and it must be so with love. My love is strange, I know that, but is it any the less lovely because of that? Besides, my love makes me happy.

If only I were not so frightened. Sometimes my terror slumbers and I forget it for a few moments, then it wakes and does not leave me. The fear is like a poor mouse trying to escape the grip of a powerful serpent. Just wait a bit, poor sad terror. Very soon, the serpent love will devour you.

"The Spider — Hanns Heinz Ewers

It was not just for herself that she feared now, but for her baby. He must have sensed her fright, for he moved restlessly inside her. — George R R Martin

It's never fun to be scared [about stage fright] but I think that it is important and it's healthy to always push yourself. — Rose Leslie

I have had a very difficult time with stage fright; it undermines your well-being and peace of mind, and it can also threaten your livelihood. — Renee Fleming

Let us put aside resolutely that great fright, tenderly and without malice, daring to be wrong in something important rather than right in some meticulous banality, fearing no evil while the mind is free to search, imagine, and conclude, inviting our countrymen to try other instruments than coercion and suppression in the effort to meet destiny with triumph, genially suspecting that no creed yet calendared in the annals of politics mirrors the doomful possibilities of infinity. — Charles A. Beard

Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. — William Shakespeare

You are a soulless monster whose fright mask is incapable of capturing human expressions. — Colson Whitehead

When you get real stage fright, it comes like a sledgehammer out of the blue in the middle of something that you know you've done too many times before, and there's no rhyme or reason for it. It's something quite different from being nervous. It's almost paralysing. — Billie Whitelaw

Daily routine is the great balm that keeps her spirits up and holds her life together, warding off the existential fright that can take you by ambush anytime you're dithering or at a loss, reminding you of the magnitude of the void you are sitting on. Keeping busy is the middle-class way - a practical way and a good way. — A.S.A Harrison

Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles; it is an act quite easy to be contemplated. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When night came on, the Macedonians and the barbarian crowd suddenly took fright in one of those mysterious panics to which great armies are liable — Thucydides

Just imagine living in a world without mirrors. You'd dream about your face and imagine it as an outer reflection of what is inside you. And then, when you reached forty, someone put a mirror before you for the first time in your life. Imagine your fright! You'd see the face of a stranger. And you'd know quite clearly what you are unable to grasp: your face is not you. — Milan Kundera

It is a great mistake, as we have already remarked, to be afraid of Him and to act in His presence like a timid and craven slave trembling with fright before his master. — Alphonsus Liguori

Well, possibly," I said, feeling my lips twitch again. "But maybe first you would tell us why you chose to manifest yourself in the form of Shirley Temple as last seen on the 'Good Ship Lollipop'?"
The demon twirled around, its big pink sash fluttering as it smoothed down its dress and frilly little petticoat. "My grotesque form isn't making you sick with fright?"
We both shook our heads, Noelle with a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. "Shirley Temple at her pinnacle was frightening," I finally told it, "but not in the sense I think you mean. — Katie MacAlister

It is not tricks of sense But the time's fright within me which distracts Least fancies into violence — Richard Wilbur

People ask me if I have stage fright. I say, "God, no, I'm completely comfortable there. I have rest-of-the-day fright." — Adam Duritz

I conquered my stage fright a long time ago. In my line of work, it's kind of a pre-requisite that you not feel bad about looking stupid in front of a lot of people. — Buzz Osborne

Whatever I think or feel inevitably turns into a form of inertia. Thought, which for other people is a compass to guide action, is for me its microscope, making me see whole universes to span where a footstep would have sufficed, as if Zeno's argument about the impossibility of crossing a given space - which, being infinitely divisible, is therefore infinite - were a strange drug that had intoxicated my psychological self. And feeling, which in other people enters the will like a hand in a glove, or like a fist in the guard of a sword, was always in me another form of thought - futile like a rage that makes us tremble so much we can't move, or like a panic (the panic, in my case, of feeling too intensely) that freezes the frightened man in his tracks, when his fright should make him flee. — Fernando Pessoa

As for the stage fright, it never goes away. When I'm waiting in the wings to go on, it's agony every single time but I stay focused and I know that once I'm on stage it'll be fine; I'll be in my happy little bubble. — Britt Ekland

Small wonder how pitiably we love our home, cling in her skirts at night, rejoice in her wide star-seducing smile, when every star strikes us sick with the fright: do we really exist at all? — James Agee

One of the easiest ways to show your mercy to the world is to hide your fears from people who are already afraid. Don't kill them alive when you truly claim you love them! — Israelmore Ayivor

Fright is something one can never get over. When a warrior is caught in such a tight spot he would simply turn his back to the ally without thinking twice. A warrior cannot indulge thus he cannot die of fright. A warrior allows the ally to come only when he is good and ready. When he is strong enough to grapple with the ally he opens up his gap and lurches out, grabs the ally, keeps him pinned down and maintains his stare on him for exactly the time he has to, then he moves his eyes away and releases the ally and lets him go. A warrior, my little friend, is the master at all times — Carlos Castaneda

When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego,
and when we escape like squirrels turning in the
cages of our personality
and get into the forests again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don't know ourselves.
Cool, unlying life will rush in,
and passion will make our bodies taut with power,
we shall stamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,
we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like
burnt paper. — D.H. Lawrence

We cannot know what time will do to us with its fine, indistinguishable layers upon layers, we cannot know what it might make of us. It advances stealthily, day by day and hour by hour and step by poisoned step, never drawing attention to its surreptitious labours, so respectful and considerate that it never once gives us a sudden prod or a nasty fright. Every morning, it turns up with its soothing, invariable face and tells us exactly the opposite of what is actually happening: that everything is fine and nothing has changed, that everything is just as it was yesterday
the balance of power
that nothing has been gained and nothing lost, that our face is the same, as is our hair and our shape, that the person who hated us continues to hate us and the person who loved us continues to love us. — Javier Marias

Next morning I awoke, looked out the window and nearly died of fright. My screams brought Atticus from his bathroom half-shaven.
"The world's endin', Atticus! Please do something -!" I dragged him to the window and pointed.
"No it's not," he said. "It's snowing. — Harper Lee

I graduated from school for graphic design, and I started to get into acting class just to get over severe fright. I was an extremely shy person. I could barely say hello to anybody. — Trevor Donovan

I feel it's all wrong to be nervous," said Maria. "I feel it's lack of confidence. One ought to go right ahead, never minding."
"Some people do," he said, "but they're the duds. They are the ones that win prizes at school, and you never hear of them again. Go on. Be nervous. Be ill. Be sick down the lavatory pan. It's part of your life from now on. You've got to go through with it. Nothing's worth while if you don't fight for it first, if you haven't a pain in your belly beforehand. — Daphne Du Maurier

Danes, Norse... all were from the northlands in the eyes of her people. To their fright-frozen minds, Hakan was another of the dreaded Norse, sweeping over the land like a plague and leaving little in the wake. But summer had yielded a different crop for her: not all Norse were vicious raiders out for death and plunder.
Hakan braced one foot on a rock. "And now the Norse wolf brings you safely home."...
"Aye," she said. — Gina Conkle

Whereas our young in years see with a dim, blurred vision; they are filled with fear and fright. The thought which haunts them day and night is - will this world be snuffed out before we have had a chance to enjoy it? And there is no one who dares to tell them that even if the world were snuffed out tomorrow, or the day after, it would not really matter - since the life they crave to enjoy is imperishable. Nor does any one tell them that the destruction of this planet, or its preservation and everlasting glory, hinges on their own thoughts, their own deeds. — Henry Miller

I feel my sinews slackened with the fright, and a cold sweat trills down all over my limbs, as if I were dissolving into water. — John Dryden

And every day there is music. One dark voice will start a phrase, half-sung, and like a question. And after a moment another voice will join in, soon the whole gang will be singing. The voices are dark in the golden glare, the music intricately blended, both somber and joyful. The music will swell until at last it seems that the sound does not come from the twelve men on the gang, but from the earth itself, or the wide sky. It is music that causes the heart to broaden and the listener to grow cold with ecstasy and fright. Then slowly the music will sink down until at last there remains one lonely voice, then a great hoarse breath, the sun, the sound of the picks in the silence.
And what kind of gang is this that can make such music? Just twelve mortal men, seven of them black and five of them white boys from this country. Just twelve mortal men who are together. — Carson McCullers

Stage fright is my worst problem. A voice is very intimate. It's something of your own. So there's always this fear, because you feel naked. There's a fear of not reaching up to expectations. — Andrea Bocelli

Buddhas and Bodhisattvas will for seven days appear to you in their benign and peaceful aspect. Their light will shine upon you, ... Wonderful and delightful though they are, The Buddhas may nevertheless frighten you. Do not give in to your fright! Do not run away! Serenely contemplate the spectacle before you! Overcome your fear, and feel no desire! Realize that these are the rays of the grace of the Buddhas, who come to receive you into their Buddha-realms. Pray to them with intense faith and humility, ... — Gautama Buddha

Speaking generally, sociability stands in inverse ratio with age. A little child raises a piteous cry of fright if it is left alone for only a few minutes; and later on, to be shut up by itself is a great punishment. Young people soon get on very friendly terms with one another; it is only the few among them of any nobility of mind who are glad now and then to be alone; - but to spend the whole day thus would be disagreeable. A grown-up man can easily do it; it is little trouble to him to be much alone, and it becomes less and less trouble as he advances in years. An old man who has outlived all his friends, and is either indifferent or dead to the pleasures of life, is in his proper element in solitude; and in individual cases the special tendency to retirement and seclusion will always be in direct proportion to intellectual capacity. For — Arthur Schopenhauer

I suspect that fright, like pain, is one of those things that slip our minds once they have passed. — Stephen King

Throughout my career, nervousness and stage-fright have never left me before playing. And each of the thousands of concerts I have played at, I feel as bad as I did the very first time. — Pablo Casals

Don't you see that I cannot be composed, I cannot reconcile myself, because there is no other reality but loneliness for me and before I am dragged back into isolation I will clasp and grasp and claw in fright even at you without consciousness - even I - and I am afraid that I cannot survive if I have to go on into myself. — Allen Ginsberg

Every turning point in a person's life isn't reached by luck, they choose to be successful, they know what it takes to be there, they can do what is expected of them to do, they do not show trepidation about the requirements needed to be on top — Michael Bassey Johnson

I would have stage-fright if I had to speak with every one of the people before whom I speak. — Karl Kraus

I was once told that flying involves long hours of boredom, interrupted by moments of extreme fright. — Franklin W. Dixon

Ned made a tremendous rattling, at which Bullet took fright, broke his bridle, and dashed off in grand style; and would have stopped all farther negotiations by going home in disgust, had not a traveller arrested him and brought him back; but Kit did not move. — Augustus Baldwin Longstreet

There was some kind of scuffle two hundred yards down the street, again strangely noiseless, and a huddled knot of men opened up to reveal two brawlers being separated and pulled away from their fight. What I saw next gave me a fright: in the farther distance, beyond the listless crowd, the body of a lynched man dangling from a tree. The body was slender, dressed from head to toe in black, reflecting no light. It soon resolved itself, however, into a less ominous thing: dark canvas sheeting on a construction scaffold, twirling in the wind. — Teju Cole

You always get nervous on stage because when you get up there, you want to do great. The crowd has you pumped up so there are always a little bit of butterflies. That's all part of it. But as far as getting stage fright, clamming up there, not generally, I just enjoy it on stage and have a great time. — Easton Corbin

If ghosts had heads, my walls would be covered with mounted ghost heads. Okay, that sounds pretty scary and kind of gross, but anyway, I could handle a little late-night fright by myself. I — J.L. Bryan

When a man grows old his joy
Grows more deep day after day,
His empty heart is full at length
But he has need of all that strength
Because of the increasing Night
That opens her mystery and fright. — William Butler Yeats

Individuation is an attainment of spiritual maturity frighteningly seldom attained in today's mono-cultures. — Bryant McGill

I have always shook with fright before human beings. Unable as I was to feel the least particle of confidence in my ability to speak and act like a human being, I kept my solitary agonies locked in my breast. I kept my melancholy and my agitation hidden, careful lest any trace should be left exposed. I feigned an innocent optimism; I gradually perfected myself in the role of the farcical eccentric. — Osamu Dazai

To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright. — Walter Benjamin

Chimerical and empty being, your name alone has caused more blood to flow on the face of the earth than any political war ever will. Return to the nothingness from which the mad hope and ridiculous fright of men dared call you forth to their misfortune. You only appeared as a torment for the human race. What crimes would have been spared the world, if they had choked the first imbecile who thought of speaking of you. — Marquis De Sade

That night, my heart softened around Wills's autism. Clearly, Katherine had been right. I couldn't isolate him. As painful as it was to watch him paralyzed with fright, I knew that he was happier when he tried. Not showing up was admitting defeat. Admitting that he couldn't do it. Admitting that the autism was bigger than him. — Monica Holloway

Once, and only once, I walked on stage and my mind went utterly blank! I had no idea why I was there! My fellow actors had to rescue me. I was very young and new to the business, so I'm glad it didn't give me stage fright for the rest of my life! — Laura Donnelly

I don't get stage fright. I do get nervous before I play in front of big audiences [though]. — Jack Barakat

Wealthy the spirit that knows its own flight. Stealthy the hunter who slays his own fright. Blessed the traveler who journeys the length of the light — Dan Fogelberg

She had had a real fright but had fallen back to earth. The odd thing was that in her fall her fear too had been dashed down and broken. It was gone. — Henry James

All those years of lurid magazine covers showing extremely nubile females being menaced in three distinct colors by assorted monstrosities; those horror movies, those invasion-from-outer-space novels, those Sunday supplement fright splashes - all those sturdy psychological ruts I had to re-track. Not to mention the shudders elicited by mention of 'worms,' the regulation distrust of even human "furriners," the superstitious dread of creatures who had no visible place to park a soul.

("Betelgeuse Bridge) — William Tenn

Is it ... dead?" asked Tom, his voice all quivery with fright.
"A town just ran over him," said Hester. "I shouldn't think he's very well ... — Philip Reeve

Should Disappointment, parent of Despair,
Strive for her son to seize my careless heart;
When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air,
Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart:
Chase him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright,
And fright him as the morning frightens night! — John Keats

Those dear to me took fright for my safety and, perhaps, my sanity. Kings, they explained, do not walk like beggars for hundreds of miles. My response was that if a beggar could managed the feat, then why not a king? Did they think me less capable than a beggar?
Sometimes I think that I am. The beggar knows much that the king can only guess. And yet who draws up the codes for begging ordinances? Often I wonder what my experience in life
my easy life following the Desolation, and my current level of comfort
has given me of any true experience to use in making laws. If we had to rely on what we knew, kings would only be of use in creating laws regarding the proper heating of tea and the cushioning of thrones. — Brandon Sanderson

White rose in red rose-garden Is not so white; Snowdrops, that plead for pardon And pine for fright Because the hard East blows Over their maiden vows, Grow not as this face grows from pale to bright. — Algernon Charles Swinburne

Want to know when I first fell a little in love with you?"

"When I didn't faint from fright after meeting Secmis?" She'd come close, practically falling into Brishen's arms when they escaped the throne room.

"That was impressive. No cowering subject before her, but no." He tugged the blanket over her shoulder where it had fallen away. "It was when you ate the scarpatine and declared it tasted nothing like chicken."

She sniffed. "Then you're easily impressed. I don't think I fell in love with you just because you choked down a potato. Granted, you didn't have to engage it in battle before you ate it."

'You're hard to please."

She thumped his chest above his sternum. "I am not."

"Ouch." He rubbed the injured spot. — Grace Draven

You didn't introduce your little cupcake to me. How rude, especially after I've tasted her lips and her fright, her want." He licked his lips again and smiled at me. "All were delicious. — Shelly Crane

I didn't have traditional stage fright. If there was 500 people in the audience or three people in the audience, it didn't really make a difference. What made a difference was the conductor. Everything that I was scared about as a drummer was him. — Damien Chazelle

They are approaching now a lengthy brick improvisation, a Victorian paraphrase of what once, long ago, resulted in Gothic cathedrals - but which, in its own time, arose not from any need to climb through the fashioning of suitable confusions toward any apical God, but more in a derangement of aim, a doubt as to the God's actual locus (or, in some, as to its very existence), out of a cruel network of sensuous moments that could not be transcended and so bent the intentions of the builders not on any zenith, but back to fright, to simple escape, in whatever direction, from what the industrial smoke, street excrement, windowless warrens, shrugging leather forests of drive belts, flowing and patient shadow states of the rats and flies, were saying about the chances for mercy that year. — Thomas Pynchon

Many men do not look their part. Wisdom may wait behind a foolish smile, bravery can gaze from eyes that cry fright. — Mark Lawrence

It's interesting - years ago, I had such bad stage fright during musical theater auditions that I just gave up. And now I'm on Broadway. — Tom Lenk

And from the first moment that I ever walked on stage in front of a darkened auditorium with a couple of hundred people sitting there, I was never afraid, I was never fearful, I didn't suffer from stage fright, because I felt so safe on that stage. I wasn't Patrick Stewart, I wasn't in the environment that frightened me, I was pretending to be someone else, and I liked the other people I pretended to be. So I felt nothing but security for being on stage. And I think that's what drew me to this strange job of playing make-believe. — Patrick Stewart

Fear is the devil's most powerful tool because he can't always convince a good man to do wrong, but he can paralyze his will with fright, keeping a good man from doing what is right. It eventually results in the same end. — Richelle E. Goodrich

If you don't have a certain amount of stage fright, then it's not going to be that interesting. It's not going to have the inner vibration. I think screen work needs inner vibration. — Charlotte Rampling

Alan: "I had terrible stage fright."
Sin: "I'm not familiar with the concept of 'stage fright.'"
A: "It's pretty awful. You end up having to picture the entire audience in their underwear. Phyllis was in that audience, you know."
S: "Why, Alan, I had no idea your tastes ran that way."
A: "Phyllis is a very nice lady. And I do not consider her so much aged as matured, like a fine wine. But I still think you owe me an archery lesson. — Sarah Rees Brennan

I don't get stage fright, I actually love the energy, I love the spontaneity, I love the adrenaline you get in front of a live audience, it actually really works for me. — Brooke Burke

I was in the utmost astonishment, and roared so loud that they all ran back in a fright; and some of them, as I was afterwards told, were hurt with the falls they got by leaping from my sides upon the ground. However, they soon returned, — Jonathan Swift

Are you not afraid of death?'
I am not in the least afraid! ... I would rather die than drink that bitter medicine.'
At that moment the door of the room flew open, and four rabbits as black as ink entered carrying on their shoulders a little bier.
What do you want with me?' cried Pinocchio, sitting up in bed in a great fright.
We are come to take you,' said the biggest rabbit.
To take me? ... But I am not yet dead! ... '
No, not yet: but you have only a few minutes to live, as you have refused the medicine that would have cured you of the fever.'
Oh, Fairy, Fairy!' the puppet then began to scream, 'give me the tumbler at once ... be quick, for pity's sake, for I will not die
no ... I will not die ... — Carlo Collodi

The nights are his, but in the daytime you will hound him and hound him until he takes fright and flees or until you drag him, staked and screaming, into the sunlight! — Stephen King

When people can see a vision and simultaneously recognize what can be done step by step in a concrete way to achieve it, they will begin to feel encouragement and enthusiasm instead of fright. — Erich Fromm

For as in the dead of night children are prey
to hosts of terrors, so we sometimes by day
are fearful of things that should no more concern us
than bogeys that frighten children in the dark.
This fright, this night of the mind must be dispelled
not by the rays of the sun, nor day's bright spears,
but by the face of nature and her laws. — Titus Lucretius Carus

I looked. George Shearing. And as always he leaned his blind head on his pale hand, all ears opened like the ears of an elephant, listening to the American sounds and mastering them for his own English summer's-night use. Then they urged him to get up and play. He did. He played innumerable choruses with amazing chords that mounted higher and higher till the sweat splashed all over the piano and everybody listened in awe and fright. They led him off the stand after an hour. He went back to his dark corner, old God Shearing, and the boys said, 'There ain't nothin left after that. — Jack Kerouac

Sarah shifted on the bench. I worried she was winding up to say something, that Sky would start humming now, that the fright spring-coiled inside me would break loose. Then I remembered the widow dress I was wearing. I made a sound with my lips like I was trying to give him an answer, but choking on the words, seized by my grief, and I didn't have to pretend that much. I felt sorrow for my life, for what I'd lived and seen and known, for what was lost to me, and the weeping turned real. — Sue Monk Kidd

In both instances [a car coming out of the Himalayas and tobogganning] the sensation was pleasurable
intensely so; it was a sudden and immense exaltation, a mixed ecstasy of deadly fright and unimaginable joy. I believe that this combination makes the perfection of human delight. — Mark Twain

The most disturbing and wasteful emotions in modern life, next to fright, are those which are associated with the idea of blame, directed against the self or against others. — Marilyn Ferguson

We may be undermined by our survival instincts, honed over eons to help us deny, defy, or ignore catastrophic portents lest they paralyze us with fright. — Alan Weisman