Frighteningly Quotes & Sayings

Normal memory gradually fades into the past. Traumatic and repressed memories have a tendency to linger around. They are splintered into fragments during overwhelming events experienced as a child. Images, sensations, emotions, and beliefs are torn apart. These disconnected pieces can later erupt into consciousness as separate "memories." These fragments may surface in the form of explicit memories, which are frighteningly vivid snapshot or video-like images of traumatic experiences; or they may surface as implicit memories, which include physical sensations, emotions, or beliefs that were part of the original traumatic experiences. When implicit fragments emerge into the present without an accompanying visually explicit memory, it is very hard to discern that these feelings of anxiety, fear, shame, rage, numbness, and loneliness are related to prior trauma. — Connie A. Lofgreen

I'm going to grab something to eat," Lorelei said. "Would you like to come with me?"
"No, thank you. I think I'll just stay here with him." Gabriel slowly lowered his face to rest his chin upon the bed near Aaron's frighteningly still hand.
"I'm not feeling very hungry. — Thomas E. Sniegoski

It is ridiculous, frighteningly ridiculous to make wars in the name of peace. — Samael Aun Weor

Life is sometimes amazingly fragile, but some lives are frighteningly strong. — Shin Kyung-sook

I felt frighteningly unbridled. — Amy Carol Reeves

It is frighteningly bizarre to hear myself described this way; a set of statistics, a musical instrument, and nothing more. — Amy Ewing

The music industry went through such a strange stretch in 1977, especially in this country, with the whole punk rock thing coming about. Punk was rebellious-and justified in that response-but it had very little to do with music, and so it created a highly-charged but frighteningly floundering atmosphere that I found very, very disheartening. Musical quality for me has always been an important part of rock'n'roll-and winning recognition for that has long been an uphill battle all the way. Punk seemed like rock'n'roll utterly without the music. — Steve Winwood

If we were always conscious of the fact that people precious to us are frighteningly mortal, hanging not even by a thread, but by a wisp of gossamer, perhaps we would be kinder to them and more grateful for the love and friendship they give to us. — Dean Koontz

Regulators have not been able to achieve the level of future clarity required to act pre-emptively. The problem is not lack of regulation but unrealistic expectations. What we confront in reality is uncertainty, some of it frighteningly so ... — Alan Greenspan

To this day, H.R. Giger's work remains distinctive in every sense. He is frighteningly unique. — Keith Emerson

Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky. — Rainer Maria Rilke

WE CAN ONLY ESCAPE THE BLOODY AND IGNORANT NIGHTMARE OF HISTORY BY EXPLORING ALTERNATIVES WHICH TODAY LOOK FRIGHTENINGLY WEIRD. — Peter J. Carroll

Frighteningly honest. What Anthony Bourdain did to the world of cooking in Kitchen Confidential, Leopold will do to the world of journalism. It's Sid & Nancy meets All the President's Men. — Rob Cohen

Late twentieth-century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed, and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines. Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert. — Donna J. Haraway

With the slow fascination of fear, he lifted himself on one arm and turned his eyes toward the blood-curdling blackness of the window.
Through it shone the stars!
Not Earth's feeble thirty-six hundred Stars visible to the eye; Lagash was in the center of a giant cluster. Thirty thousand mighty suns shone down in a soul-searing splendor that was more frighteningly cold in its awful indifference than the bitter wind that shivered across the cold, horribly bleak world. — Isaac Asimov

How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty. — Eric Hoffer

Maybe Myron didn't care so much. You read the papers and you watch the news and you see what Myron has seen and your humanity, your basic faith in human beings, begins to look frighteningly Pollyanna. That was what was really eating away at him - not that he was repulsed by what Win did, but that it really didn't bother him that much. Win — Harlan Coben

You learned that it was easy frighteningly easy to get lost in someone else's life accommodating him and stop being yourself. You learned to be wary about falling in love. And you learned that someone who loved you could stop loving you for some dark reason and even though that was bruising you were more resilient than you knew. Eventually you would get over it more or less. — Laura Fraser

But also I find the sea too vast. It frightens me a little, though I am not sure why. It is not really the fear of drowning in it. I think it is more that the sea is a reminder of how little control we have over our lives no matter how carefully we try to plan and order them. Everything changes in ways we least expect, and everything is frighteningly vast. We are so small.'
'The fast can actually be comforting at times,' he said. 'When we lash out at ourselves for having lost control ,we are reminded that we never can be in control, that all life asks of us is to do our best to cope with what is handed to us. It is easier said than done, of course. Indeed, it is often impossible to do. But I always find a stroll on the beach reassuring. — Mary Balogh

She stood up and took the book from him, and as he smiled over his shoulder at some other kids, she threw it away and kicked him as hard as she could in the vicinity of the groin.
Well, as you might imagine, Ludwig Schmeikl certainly buckled, and on the way down, he was punched in the ear. When he landed, he was set upon. When he was set upon, he was slapped and clawed and obliterated by a girl who was utterly consumed with rage. His skin was so warm and soft. Her knuckles and fingernails were so frighteningly tough, despite their smallness.
You Saukerl." Her voice, too, was able to scratch him. "You Arschloch. Can you spell Arschloch for me? — Markus Zusak

I think it is more tha6 the sea is a reminder of how little control we have over our own lives no matter how carefully we try to plan and order them. Everything changes in ways we least expect, and everything is frighteningly vast. We are so small. — Mary Balogh

I was paralyzed with fear. It was unbearable to be among other kids who were just standing around being fine. It was one of the many inconveniences of this paradox I lived with -the more people I was surrounded by, the more frighteningly alone I felt. — Sarah Silverman

I am writing this because on that night of the tenth of May in the 1,940th year of Our Lord, Churchill stood for more than England. Millions of people, especially across Europe, recognized him now as the champion of their hopes. (In faraway Bengal India there was at least one man, that admirably independent writer and thinker, Nirad Chaudhuri, who fastened Churchill's picture on the wall of his room the next day.) Churchill was _the_ opponent of Hitler, the incarnation of the reaction to Hitler, the incarnation of the resistance of an old world, of old freedoms, of old standards against a man incarnating a force that was frighteningly efficient, brutal, and new. — John Lukacs

Let us return, however, to the League of Nations. To create an organization which is in a position to protect peace in this world of conflicting interests and egotistic wills is a frighteningly difficult task. — Hjalmar Branting

Since there is no system of public education, the great majority of my fellow citizens is frighteningly ignorant. They have no idea where Iraq is. They accept as the gospel whatever the government tells them. Good grief, any other normal country would have been against the Iraq war! But we live in an abnormal country, governed by experts in deceptive advertising. — Gore Vidal

People wonder how they are ever going to change their lives, but really it is frighteningly easy. — Chris Cleave

Then the triumph was swept away by something much stronger and deeper. Something fierce and joyous-and pure. They were clinging together, he was holding her as hard as she was holding him.
Electricity seemed to arc between them. Everywhere they touched Kaitlyn could feel the sparks. His hand tangled in her hair, and she was frighteningly moved by the tiny tugs, the little pain it caused as his fingers worked. His lips brushed against hers again and again. — L.J.Smith

There is a poverty of the average human's life, who is unnoticed by the world. It is the poverty of the commonplace. There is nothing heroic about it; it is the poverty of the common lot, devoid of ecstasy. Jesus was poor in this way. He was no model figure for humanists, no great artist or statesman, no diffident genius. He was a frighteningly simple man, whose only talent was to do good. The one great passion in his life was "the Father." Yet it was precisely in this way that he demonstrated "the wonder of empty hands" (Bernanos), the great potential of the person on the street, whose radical dependence on God is no different from anyone else's. He has no talent but that of his own heart, no contribution to make except self-abandonment, no consolation save God alone. — Johann Baptist Metz

All Eli had to do was smile. All Victor had to do was lie. Both proved frighteningly effective. — Victoria Schwab

We are the authors of our own destiny; and being the authors, we are ultimately, perhaps frighteningly, free. — Santideva

Maya Angelou entered our lives at Virago in 1984, when we first published I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. "Entered our lives" is too tame. She danced, sang, and laughed her way straight into our hearts. She brought us a best-seller, but more than that, she brought us a reminder that the human need for dignity and recognition is a gift easily given to one another, but also frighteningly easy to withhold. — Lennie Goodings

There was a sliding noise and a tinkle exactly like the tinkle a spoon makes when it's put back among the other spoons, who have missed it and are anxious to hear its tales of life among the frighteningly pointy people. — Terry Pratchett

Then I got to my feet, and, taking my arms, he drew me out of my picture frame, into the darkness and the heat, to a place where the ground was frighteningly, thrillingly far away, and the sunless sky was burning and trembling all around us. — Rinsai Rossetti

Tshepo reckons that it is inevitable that one's circle of friends will become smaller as one grows older. He reasons that when we begin we are similar, like two glasses of water sitting side by side on a clean tray. There is very little that differentiates us. We are simple beings whose interests do not extend beyond playing touch and kicking balls.
However, like the two glasses of water forgotten on a tray in the reading room, we start to collect bits. Bits of fluff, bits of a broken beetle wing, bits of bread, bits of pollen, bits of shed epithelial cells, bits of hair, bits of toilet paper, bits of airborne fungal organisms, bits of bits. All sorts of bits. No two combinations the same. Just like with the glasses of water, Environment, jealous of our fundamentality, bombards our basic minds with complexity. So we become frighteningly dissimilar, until there is very little that holds us together. — Kopano Matlwa

Diane Arbus is one of the most mysterious, enigmatic, and frighteningly daring artists of the 20th century. Her work emerged from a deeply private place and profoundly affected all those who came into contact with it. — Steven Shainberg

maybe an implication of Noah's offering was, "Now that it's all over, give us your blessing; please don't do it again." God's undertaking is then an answer to that prayer. If this is so, it reminds us of another facet of the importance of our worship and prayer. Sometimes God's acts of grace and mercy are a response to prayer. If we don't pray, the world may miss some acts of grace and mercy. As James 4 frighteningly puts it, "You don't have because you don't ask. — John E. Goldingay

None of us wants to be reminded that dementia is random, relentless, and frighteningly common. — Laurie Graham

It made me feel as if I was taking back some control over my life when everything else had been shaken up so frighteningly. — Lucy Diamond

In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioural research laboratories running around inside wheels and conduction frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this relationship was entirely according to these creatures' plans. — Douglas Adams

Frighteningly Beautiful, Dangerously Strong, Breathtakingly Fast.
Face it Tally-wa you're special ... — Scott Westerfeld

His brain was in one of those states that are both violent and yet frighteningly calm, in which thought runs so deep it blots out reality. You no longer see the objects around you, yet you can see the shapes in your mind as thought they are outside your body. — Victor Hugo

Her heart was heavy because it was open, and so things filled it, and so things rushed out of it, but still the heart kept beating, tough and frighteningly powerful and meaning to shrug off the rest of her and continue on its own. — Helen Oyeyemi

Trust me, at the time nine hundred years seemed frighteningly short - it still does. I really don't know how you cope with your eighty-something life spans, and that's a best-case scenario, isn't it? — Tosca Lee

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

The old neighborhoods of Shanghai, Feedless or with overhead Feeds kludged in on bamboo stilts, seemed frighteningly inert, like an opium addict squatting in the middle of a frenetic downtown street, blowing a reed of sweet smoke out between his teeth, staring into some ancient dream that all the bustling pedestrians had banished to unfrequented parts of their minds. — Neal Stephenson

Barrons was powerful, broodingly good-looking, insanely wealthy, frighteningly intelligent, and had exquisite taste, not to mention a hard body that emitted some kind of constant low-level charge. Bottom line: He was the stuff of heroes.
And psychotic killers. — Karen Marie Moning

She will be busy writing novels. As soon as she had has gotten far enough away from this frighteningly puritanical country, her mind will be set free, and she will be able to turn all of her observations in richly drawn characters and intricately themed stories."
"But what will she eat, dear Grass?" Barnard leaned against the wall, his arms crossing his chest skeptically.
"Baguette and red wine, pure art, filthy air. Look at her, she is made of rose petals, and the world will take good care of her. And if it does not, we will have our hearts moved by such an exquisitely gorgeous tragedy. — Anna Godbersen

How did he close off that part of his brain that tells someone they've harmed another soul?...Most frighteningly of all, are some of us born with no conscience at all? — Dan Skinner

All across the world, ... increasingly dangerous weather patterns and devastating storms are abruptly putting an end to the long-running debate over whether or not climate change is real. Not only is it real, it's here, and its effects are giving rise to a frighteningly new global phenomenon: the man-made natural disaster. — Barack Obama

He was knowledgeable and often frighteningly intelligent but he was also a dreamer. He had a mental library of a thousand stories and seemed to believe them all. Heroes, villains, princesses in need of rescue, monsters and magical swords. It all lived in his head, as vital and real as his own memories. — Anthony Ryan

It was frighteningly close to what he believed of his father at the worst moments - that he really was the kind of man who would send a letter signed "Sincerely, Cpl. Peter Vilmos" to someone he'd seen naked. — Tad Williams

Christmas is frighteningly magical and mysterious. No wonder people feel lonely in the midst of their families, and unloved in the act of receiving gifts. Christmas is that place where the expectation of happiness confronts the reality of human sadness, where joy to the world means the judgment of mankind. — R. Joseph Hoffmann

We have become frighteningly effective at altering nature. — Sylvia Earle

I am a frighteningly thorough person. — Daniel Radcliffe

There was no one to tell Scarlett that her own personality, frighteningly vital though it was, was more attractive than any masquerade she might adopt. Had she been told, she would have been pleased but unbelieving. And the civilization of which she was a part would have been unbelieving too, for at no time, before or since, had so low a premium been placed on feminine naturalness. — Margaret Mitchell

Negativity could be frighteningly contagious. — Mary Balogh

He said human beings were like a wind blowing. He said that sometimes we're loud and sometimes we're a whisper, sometimes we're warm and sometimes we're frighteningly cold. But however we blow, we blow onwards, and leave no sign of us behind. — Ali Shaw

Then, frighteningly, he said, 'But as you are a man, how are you going to deliver your pregnancy? This is a big problem for you. — Amos Tutuola

I cannot cook to save my life. I'm really frighteningly useless, when you get down to it. — Nikki Cox

My limitations abruptly define the frighteningly negligible extent of my existence, yet my soul utterly perishes if bound by those very same limits. And does this not somehow evidence both the reality of and need for God? — Craig D. Lounsbrough

So far no one had had enough courage and intelligence to reveal me to my dear Germans. My problems are new, my psychological horizon frighteningly comprehensive, my language bold and clear; there may well be no books written in German which are richer in ideas and more independent than mine. — Friedrich Nietzsche

His eyes were frighteningly alive, the curve of his mouth savage and pleased. It suddenly didn't seem at all surprising that he should be able to pull things from his dreams.
In that moment, Blue was a little in love with all of them. Their magic. Their quest. Their awfulness and strangeness. Her raven boys. — Maggie Stiefvater

Today the danger of the pro-life position, which I vigorously support, is that it can be frighteningly selective. The rights of the unborn and the dignity of the age-worn are pieces of the same pro-life fabric. We weep at the unjustified destruction of the unborn. Did we also weep when the evening news reported from Arkansas that a black family had been shotgunned out of a white neighborhood.
When we laud life and blast abortionists, our credibility as Christians is questionable. On one hand we proclaim the love and anguish, the pain and joy that goes into fashioning a single child. We proclaim how precious each life is to God and should be to us. On the other hand, when it is the enemy that shrieks to heaven with his flesh in flames, we do not weep, we are not shamed; we call for more — Brennan Manning

The unicorn halted in her slow, desperate round of the cage, realizing for the first time that the magician understood her speech. He smiled, and she saw that his face was frighteningly young for a grown man-untraveled by time, unvisited by grief or wisdom. "I know you," he said. — Peter S. Beagle

Suicide is a crime of loneliness, and adulated people can be frighteningly alone. Intelligence does not help in these circumstances; brilliance is almost always profoundly isolating. — Andrew Solomon

Is not this home, this biosphere where cunning and violence is rewarded, resources are frighteningly scarce and security never guaranteed, a nightmarish cage where every inmate is contracted by birth to prey upon the other in order to steal the proteins and fats and sugars and minerals they need just to stay alive one more day in what amounts to a daily apocalypse of obliged bloodletting? — John Zande

In an age of information overload ... the last thing any of us needs is more information about God. We need the practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those whose intellectual assent has turned them dry as dust, who have run frighteningly low on the bread of life, who are dying to know more God in their bodies. Not more about God. More God. — Rachel Held Evans

Fear brings your mind to the edge of insanity, where everything is so frighteningly crystal clear you can take in every little thing that's happening around you. Your body runs purely on adrenaline, with not a drop of blood pumping through your veins. — Michelle Horst

I wanted to feel the blood running back into my veins, even at the cost of annihilation. I wanted to shake the stone and light out of my system. I wanted the dark fecundity of nature, the deep well of the womb, silence, or else the lapping of the black waters of death. I wanted to be that night which the remorseless eye illuminated, a night diapered with stars and trailing comets. To be of night so frighteningly silent, so utterly incomprehensible and eloquent at the same time. Never more to speak or to listen or to think. — Henry Miller