Petrified Quotes & Sayings

I actually got really petrified by the thought of people seeing me. — Andy Partridge

It was as if, before she'd met him, her blood had circulated grayly around her body, and now ir was all oxygenated and red. She was petrified of becoming the half-alive person she'd been before. — Jeffrey Eugenides

As a child, I was a brat, and my parents didn't know how to control me. So they told me ghost stories, which stayed with me. I am still petrified of darkness and being alone. — Bipasha Basu

Y'all got your heads tucked so far up your rears, she's petrified the kid's gonna need a shrink before he can shit in a dish. — Addison Moore

I can't remember the words she spoke when they finally opened the garage door and yanked me inside, but I was petrified. It wasn't sound Mom's screams or the jolt of her grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me like a rag doll that plagues my memory, but the look of her eyes- wide, wild, and unrecognizable. — Maggie Young

I'm pretty good at sticking to what I know. You don't see me social commentating on health-care or presidential debates. I talk about what I know because I'm petrified of being wrong. — Gary Vaynerchuk

Read as little as possible of literary criticism - such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened and empty of life, or else they are just clever word-games, in which one view wins today, and tomorrow the opposite view. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Religion grows with the intelligence of man, but all religions of the past and probably all of the future will sooner or later become petrified forms instead of living helps to mankind. Until that time comes, however, if religion of any name or nature makes man more happy, comfortable, and able to live peaceably with his brothers, it is good. — Luther Burbank

A Gothic church is a petrified religion. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Sometimes you don't have enough money to hire a real science teacher. Sometimes you have an old real science teacher who retires or quits and leaves you without a replacement. And if you don't have a real science teacher, then you pick one of the other teachers and make him the science teacher.
And that's why small-town kids sometimes don't know the truth about petrified wood. — Sherman Alexie

An interesting example is that the worst woman in the book, who is so cruel and violent, is the sorceress in "The Prince of the Black Islands." She's a beautiful young woman, and she has turned her husband into stone from the waist down. A traveling sultan finds him, in his dreadful state, and the man petrified from the waist down tells his sad story ... how his wife comes every afternoon and beats him until the blood runs down. She's just unwontedly, arbitrarily cruel. — Marina Warner

The first and last schoolmaster of life is living and committing oneself unreservedly and dangerously to living; to men who know this an Aristotle and a Plato have much to say; but those who have imposed cautions on themselves and petrified themselves in a system of ideas, them the masters themselves will lead into error — Thornton Wilder

I suffer from CLAUSTROPHOBIA, a fear of closed spaces.For example, I'm petrified that the WINE store will be closed before I have time to get there!!! — Tanya Masse

And then I met a woman,
now comes the funny part;
with eyes that petrified my brain
and sunk into my heart. — Hugh Antoine D'Arcy

That's the principle of progress, the notion that things will one day change. We must expect different results, otherwise the whole world becomes petrified. — Lindsey Drager

Wherever primitive man put up a word, he believed he had made a discovery. How utterly mistaken he really was! He had touched a problem, and while supposing he had solved it, he had created and obstacle to its solution. Now, with every new knowledge we stumble over flint-like and petrified words and, in so doing, break a leg sooner than a word. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Warner drops his hand. His glassy green eyes are so delighted I'm petrified.
"God, I've missed you," he says to me.
"You didn't actually think I'd let you go so easily? — Tahereh Mafi

I have found a paper of mine among some others in which I call architecture 'petrified music.' Really there is something in this; the tone of mind produced by architecture approaches the effect of music. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Everyone just kind of leans their expectations of who you are on you and it makes you petrified of who you really might be. — Iain S. Thomas

I can't believe I said it out loud. The truth doesn't set you free, you know. It makes you feel awkward and embarrassed and defenseless and red in the face and horrified and petrified and vulnerable. But free? I don't feel free. I feel like shit. — Melina Marchetta

Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which
he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of
other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is
the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for
data, his words for actual things. That which, in the language of religion, is called "this world" is the
universe of reduced awareness, expressed, and, as it were, petrified by language. — Aldous Huxley

I went to a Karaoke Bar last night that didn't play any 70s music, at first I was afriad, oh I was petrified — Stewart Francis

Part of one's despair, of course, is that the world cares nothing for the little shocks endured by the sensitive stickler. While we look in horror at a badly punctuated sign, the world carries on around us, blind to our plight. We are like the little boy in The Sixth Sense who can see dead people, except that we can see dead punctuation. Whisper it in petrified little-boy tones: dead punctuation is invisible to everyone else
yet we see it all the time. No one understands us seventh-sense people. They regard us as freaks. When we point out illiterate mistakes we are often aggressively instructed to "get a life" by people who, interestingly, display no evidence of having lives themselves. Naturally we become timid about making our insights known, in such inhospitable conditions. Being burned as a witch is not safely enough off the agenda. — Lynne Truss

Language-lovers know that there is a word for every fear. Are you afraid of wine? Then you have oenophobia. Tremulous about train travel? You suffer from siderodromophobia. Having misgivings about your mother-in-law is pentheraphobia, and being petrified of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth is arachibutyrophobia. And then there's Franklin Delano Roosevelt's affliction, the fear of fear itself, or phobophobia. — Steven Pinker

One thing had amazed him, - this was that Jean Valjean should have done him a favor, and one thing petrified him, - that he, Javert, should have done Jean Valjean a favor. — Victor Hugo

I'm petrified of bees because I have an anaphylactic reaction to bees. — Joyce Giraud

Petite and with a rounded figure exaggerated by her tight dress, she was a beautiful mermaid swimming through the crowded street, and Gil felt like a petrified little fish in front of a shark. Maybe — Mala Spina

I've always been petrified of working for a boss who I didn't like but who I was in fear of, because I wanted my salary. — Simon Cowell

She told him that from this angle the treetops looked like cauliflower and she had once heard them beckon her to jump, promising her that if she did, they'd bounce her back in the air again. Some days, like today, he was petrified she'd listen to them. — Melina Marchetta

Let me just acknowlege that the function of grammar is to make language as efficent and clear and transparent as possible. But if we're all constantly correcting each other's grammar and being really snotty about it, then people stop talking because they start to be petrified that they're going to make some sort of terrible grammatical error and that's precisely the opposite of what grammar is supposed to do, which is to facilitate clear communication. — John Green

Shale's answers were, for the most part, sarcastic. When asked what kind of rock it consisted of, Shale answered "petrified nug droppings." When asked how it was created, Shale responded with a long explanation of mother golems and father golems which Pharamond believed for five whole minutes. When asked how it could see through those points of lights in its eye sockets, Shale commented that it actually preferred tearing the eyeballs out of flesh creatures and using them instead - elven ones in particular. — David Gaider

At the very beginning, I was a page at Letterman, and I freelanced for any place that would let me write any word. I wanted to do this so badly. Then when I got a tiny bit of success, I was petrified that I was going to lose it. — Ben Schwartz

New York ... is a city of geometric heights, a petrified desert of grids and lattices, an inferno of greenish abstraction under a flat sky, a real Metropolis from which man is absent by his very accumulation. — Roland Barthes

She hears all the voices from when she was little, soothing, strengthening: Don't be scared, not of monsters, not of witches, not of big dogs. And now, snapping loud from every direction: Be scared, you have to be scared, ordering like this is your one absolute duty. Be scared you're fat, be scared your boobs are too big and be scared they're too small. Be scared to walk on your own, specially anywhere quiet enough that you can hear yourself think. Be scared of wearing the wrong stuff, saying the wrong thing, having a stupid laugh, being uncool. Be scared of guys not fancying you; be scared of guys, they're animals, rabid, can't stop themselves. Be scared of girls, they're all vicious, they'll cut you down before you can cut them. Be scared of strangers. Be scared you won't do well enough in your exams, be scared of getting in trouble. Be scared terrified petrified that everything you are is every kind of wrong. Good girl. — Tana French

An academical system without the personal influence of teachers on pupils, is an arctic winter; it will create an icebound, petrified, cast-iron University, and nothing else. — John Henry Newman

But he was incapable of shame.He had no conscience or soul.No heart, either.That has broken and died years ago.The leftover pieces had petrified in his chest, leaving stone shrapnel in a black, empty place that felt nothing.Just a yawning void of nothing.And he liked it that way ... — Charlotte Featherstone

I'm a chipper guy, once you get to know the raw, dark dread and petrified fear that lurks in my breast and that I battle with every waking moment and that sometimes has me sobbing into my palms when no one is around and makes it really hard to be in crowds or to stand any loud sounds and has me thinking I'll probably never be in a functional relationship again, platonic or otherwise. Once you get that, you have to say to yourself, Hey, why's this guy so damn happy all the time? — Hugh Howey

If this was love, it felt different than she'd imagined it would, walking a thin line between passion and terror. It was Romeo and Juliet. It was Wuthering Heights. And Val was left petrified from the boiling intensity of it. — Nenia Campbell

She wondered how trees became petrified, if the same process worked with a human heart. — Jodi Picoult

The look she gave him in reply would have petrified Medusa. — Karsten Knight

At the time that the telegraph brought the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast. I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands - a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how I have succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say. — Mark Twain

I was seeking within myself the human being I had so long lost sight of, hoping that my passion had only been distorted but had never been completely suppressed, by the social illusion, by the dominant ideal of "concealing emotions". I wished to shout: "I broke away from your cold and petrified world in which I was one of the wheels running noiselessly in the great machine, one of the idle wheels. I have plunged into an unknown abyss; and in this one hour of the plunge I have lived more fully than in all sheltered years in your circle. I do not belong to you anymore, I may be on the heights or in the depths, but never shall I return to the dead levels of your philistine comfort. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Meanwhile it's got stormy, the tattered fog even thicker, chasing across my path. Three people are sitting in a glassy tourist cafe between clouds and clouds, protected by glass from all sides. Since I don't see any waiters, it crosses my mind that corpses have been sitting there for weeks, statuesque. All this time the cafe has been unattended, for sure. Just how long have they been sitting here, petrified like this? — Werner Herzog

You don't fear me," he said now.
She wasn't stupid enough to lie. "I'm petrified. But I figure you didn't make me come all this way just so you could push me off the roof. — Nalini Singh

I will remark, here, that James W. Paige, the little bright-eyed, alert, smartly dressed inventor of the machine, is a most extraordinary compound of business thrift and commercial insanity; of cold calculation and jejune sentimentality; of veracity and falsehood; of fidelity and treachery; of nobility and baseness; of pluck and cowardice; of wasteful liberality and pitiful stinginess; of solid sense and weltering moonshine; of towering genius and trivial ambitions; of merciful bowels and a petrified heart; of colossal vanity and - But there the opposites stop. His vanity stands alone, sky-piercing, as sharp of outline as an Egyptian monolith. It is the only unpleasant feature in him that is not modified, softened, compensated by some converse characteristic. — Mark Twain

I bit my lip. 'Come on then, you dirty old man.' I stepped forward and smacked a kiss on Baz's lips. He looked petrified. The secretary looked horrified. I felt vindicated. 'Run along now, Daddy.' I said. — Antony John

There, on the soft sand, a few feet away from our elders, we would sprawl all morning, in a petrified paroxysm of desire, and take advantage of every blessed quirk in space and time to touch each other: her hand, half-hidden in the sand, would creep toward me, its slender brown fingers sleepwalking nearer and nearer; then, her opalescent knee would start on a long cautious journey; sometimes a chance rampart built by younger children granted us sufficient concealment to graze each other's salty lips; these incomplete contacts drove our healthy and inexperienced young bodies to such a state of exasperation that not even the cold blue water, under which we still clawed at each other, could bring relief. — Vladimir Nabokov

morsels of tesselated pavement from Herculaneum and Pompeii, like petrified minced veal; — Charles Dickens

Most men are petrified of standing out in any way or being thought superficial. — Russell Smith

It was my first scene in any movie and my only scene in Kramer vs. Kramer. I was petrified. — JoBeth Williams

Do you think I'm wonderful? she asked him one day as they leaned against the trunk of a petrified maple. No, he said. Why? Because so many girls are wonderful. I imagine hundreds of men have called their loves wonderful today, and it's only noon. You couldn't be something that hundreds of others are. — Jonathan Safran Foer

A film is a petrified fountain of thought. — Jean Cocteau

When I got a tiny bit of success, I was petrified that I was going to lose it. I still feel it. — Ben Schwartz

Be scared terrified petrified that everything you are is every kind of wrong. Good girl. At — Tana French

My first fight. I fought a girl that was a little bit heavier, a little bit more experienced and I was petrified because I didn't know what I was getting myself into. And I did really well against her and nobody believed it was my first fight. — Gina Carano

I remember being in intensive care, looking at the clock and thinking 'don't go to sleep, don't go to sleep'. I can laugh about it now but I was petrified. — Graeme Souness

Unfortunately, we cannot live our lives according to the moral and religious convictions or petrified dogmas of our forebears. We have an obligation to live by our own faith, forever renewing the traditions of the past and adapting them to the demands of own time and place. — Farquhar McHarg

If you steal other people's characters, it doesn't work with the context of the scripts and what is written, so I wanted to make her my own. I was petrified, in the beginning, because it's such an iconic character, especially being a young lady myself. — Tamsin Egerton

It would have been difficult to say what was the nature of this look, and whence proceeded the flame that flashed from it. It was a fixed gaze, which was, nevertheless, full of trouble and tumult. And, from the profound immobility of his whole body, barely agitated at intervals by an involuntary shiver, as a tree is moved by the wind; from the stiffness of his elbows, more marble than the balustrade on which they leaned; or the sight of the petrified smile which contracted his face, - one would have said that nothing living was left about Claude Frollo except his eyes. — Victor Hugo

Alan Turing is so important to me and to the world, and his story is so important to be told, so it was a big thing to take up, and I was a little petrified. Like, who am I to write the Alan Turing story? He's one of the great geniuses of the 20th century - who was horribly persecuted for being gay - and I'm a kid from Chicago. — Graham Moore

You used to give yourself over to endless sessions of doubt. You would claim to be an expert on the subject. But doubting would tire you so much that you would end up doubting doubt itself. I saw you one day at the end of an afternoon of solitary speculation. You were unmoving and petrified. Running several kilometers in a deep forest full of ravines and pitfalls would have exhausted you less. — Edouard Leve

I'm the kind of guy who would say, "Yeah, I'll do that!," and then, when it came down to it, I would be absolutely petrified. Those days have passed me by, but I would do it. If it meant that I was in a scene naked with a woman, or anybody romantic, I'd be into it. — Chris Bauer

Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and petrified by custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity a geologic period. — Mark Twain

I am as frustrated with society as a pyromaniac in a petrified forest. — A. Whitney Brown

I looked at her, at first with the sort of gaze that is not merely the messenger of the eyes, but a window at which all the senses lean out, anxious and petrified, a gaze that would like to touch the body it is looking at, capture it, take it away and the soul along with it. — Marcel Proust

He remembers the philosophers dead with detail, and how they honed their trade into the grave for the sake of their livelihoods. Incapable of audacity, they pleasured themselves with a maze constructed of nothing but dead-ends. They were so petrified they might happen upon the truth, might come to know something for certain, that they deployed some of their best minds to obliterate it, scattering its shards into infinity. But they were only trying to keep the dream alive, after all, fighting to keep the questions outnumbering the answers, picking away at the odd dropped stitch in an otherwise ever-tightening blanket of sacrosanct precision. They fought hard, if unwittingly, against the encroaching dullness of complete knowledge, but ultimately paid the price of becoming as dull as their enemy - at least the chemical truths of literature sometimes bothered to wear a suit and tie. — Gary J. Shipley

And Chaol was afraid, but not for himself. He was afraid of what would come when Aedion and Aelin were reunited. For he'd seen in her that same glittering ember that made people look and listen. Had seen her stalk into the council with Councilor Mullison's head and smile at the King of Adarlan, every man in that room enthralled and petrified by the dark whirlwind of her spirit. The two of them together, both of them lethal, working to build an army, ignite their people ... He was afraid of what they would do to his kingdom. — Sarah J. Maas

I was petrified because all my friends would be going to Washington, DC, to protest. I was sixteen, and I was like, "I don't think I'll be going with you guys," just because I was scared. Then you saw the news, and cops - not students in schools with guns - cops are killing sixteen year old protesters on the news. To me that was more horrifying, to have the authority figures actually killing people on the evening news, than to have another student firing a gun. — Gus Van Sant

I read a page of Plato's great work. I can no longer understand anything, because behind the words on the page, which have their own heavenly brightness, to be sure, there shines an even brighter, an enormous, dazzling -why- that blots out everything, cancels out, destroys all meaning. All individual intelligence. When one has understood, one stops, satisfied with what one has understood. I do not understand. Understanding is far too little. To have understood is to be fixed, immobilized. It is as though one wanted to stop on one step in the middle of a staircase, or with one foot in the void and the other on the endless stair. But a mere why, a new why can set one off again, can unpetrify what was petrified and everything starts flowing afresh. How can one understand? One cannot. — Eugene Ionesco

But when the 'Glee' audition came around, my manager literally had to talk me into it. I was petrified to sing in front of anyone. — Cory Monteith

He knows that in the whole history of the race of men no single great and high and beneficent thing was ever done for the souls and bodies, the hearts and the brains, of the children of this world, but a Mugwump started it and Mugwumps carried it to victory. And their names are the stateliest in history: Washington, Garrison, Galileo, Luther, Christ. Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world--and never will. — Mark Twain

The instant of petrified violence that sometimes foreruns a summer storm saturated the hushed yard, and in the unearthly tinseled light rusty buckets of trailing fern which were strung round the porch like party lanterns appeared illuminated by a faint green inward flame. — Truman Capote

As the boys screamed and hauled off handfuls of mulch, Olivier had slowly, deliberately, gently taken Gabri's hand and held it before gracefully lifting it to his lips. The boys had watched, momentarily stunned, as Olivier had kissed Gabri's manure-stained hand with his manure-stained lips. The boys had seemed petrified by this act of love and defiance. But just for a moment. Their hatred triumphed and soon their attack had re-doubled. — Louise Penny

The future works out great men's destinies; The present is enough for common souls, Who, never looking forward, are indeed Mere clay wherein the footprints of their age Are petrified forever. — James Russell Lowell

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations. — George Eliot

Anyone who can read history with both hemispheres of the brain knows that a world comes to an end every instant
the waves of time leave washed up behind themselves only dry memories of a closed & petrified past
imperfect memory, itself already dying & autumnal. And every instant also gives birth to a world
despite the cavillings of philosophers & scientists whose bodies have grown numb
a present in which all impossibilities are renewed, where regret & premonition fade to nothing in one presential hologrammatical psychomantric gesture. — Hakim Bey

A few minutes ago he'd been petrified, and now all he could think was that he refused, absolutely refused, to embarrass himself any more. The man was a historian. Once Arthur got over his appearance, he was going to remember that most historians were full of themselves and often boring, and he was going to feel very foolish. — R. Cooper

The first time Akash took Supriya to view the pool, I rose up in strident protest, and he was astonished by the way she turned her face away, her eyes filled with terror. "I am petrified of water!" she whispered, as he tried to cajole her to at least put her feet in. — Deepti Menon

What if the purpose of my life is not about me? Am I willing to give up all my dreams, my aspirations and comfort to find it/ Are you willing to pay the cost? This is the pearl of great price, the abundant life we are all seeking and, at the same time, petrified to find. — Jeff Goins

And now he is once again finding life more and more difficult, each day a little less possible than the last. In his every day stands a tree, black and dying, with a single branch jutting to its right, a scarecrow's sole prosthetic, and it is from this branch that he hangs. Above him a rain is always misting, which makes the branch slippery. But he clings to it, as tired as he is, because beneath him is a hole bored into the earth so deep that he cannot see where it ends. He is petrified to let go because he will fall into the hole, but eventually he knows he will, he knows he must: he is so tired. His grasp weakens a bit, just a little bit, with every week.
So it is with guilt and regret, but also with a sense of inevitability, that he cheats on his promise to Harold. — Hanya Yanagihara

Morwen was petrified. Galadir was getting closer. She could feel his breath, cold and accelerated. She imagined for a second like would be kissing him. A hazard too dangerous. And what if she could not stop? If by mistake, kissing him, she had bitten him? What if his blood was come down sweet in her throat? No. Too dangerous. With a quick movement, she stood up and walked away from the Prince. — Chiara Cilli

I was very, very shy as a younger girl, just petrified of people. — Chris Evert

A work of art can be called revolutionary if, by virtue of the aesthetic transformation, it represents, in the exemplary fate of individuals, the prevailing unfreedom and the rebelling forces, thus breaking through the mystified (and petrified) social reality, and opening the horizon of change (liberation). — Herbert Marcuse

And I laugh and I spin and dance and frolic in ecstasy and I ... I hurt no more, while you ... you petrified little man, are left to wonder if it's you I speak of. — Kellie Elmore

While we look in horror at a badly punctuated sign, the world carries on around us, blind to our plight. We are like the little boy in The Sixth Sense who can see dead people, except that we can see dead punctuation. Whisper it in petrified little-boy tones: dead punctuation is invisible to everyone else - yet we see it all the time. — Lynne Truss

I think I must be smiling at him because he's smiling at me, but he's smiling like he might be petrified; he's breathing like he's forgotten he's supposed to, looking at me like he's not sure how to do this, hesitating like he's unsure how to let me see him like this. Like he has no idea how to be so vulnerable.
But here he is.
And here I am. — Tahereh Mafi

Why are you so petrified of silence, here can you handle this? Did you think about your bills, your ex, your deadlines or when you think you're gonna die? Or did you long for the next distraction ... — Alanis Morissette

Yes. I gave an elf some hewlip soup and their head exploded. Ir was so much fun it was almost worth life imprisonment. I am saving my last leaf for someone special. I love seeing heads explode. I can't help it!'
Nikolas felt fear prickle his skin. If even he sweetest-looking pixie could turn out to be a murderer, there really was no hope.
'Would you like to see my head explode?' Nikolas asked, although he was petrified of the answer.
The Truth Pixie desperately tried to lie. 'Nnnnnnnnnnn ... yes! I would like that so much!' The she looked guilty. 'Sorry,' she added, softly. — Matt Haig

I will say that when I first came out to the States to work on 'Jericho,' that was the only time that I've ever been frightened about a job, because in America they tell stories over such a long time, and I was petrified that I'd get bored. — Lennie James

When white people envision their perfect home, it always has hardwood floors. In fact, most white people would prefer a dirt floor over wall-to-wall carpeting, because to them it would have the same level of cleanliness and probably fewer germs.
White people are petrified of germs, and when they look at a carpet all they can see is everything that has ever been spilled, tracked in, or shaken loose into the carpet fibers. But more disgusting to white people is that wall-to-wall carpeting reminds them of suburban homes, motel rooms, and the horrible apartments that they have visited or lived in over the years. It has no soul. Only germs.
Hardwood floors, on the other hand, are easily cleaned and give a sense of character to a place, since they are often the original flooring in older buildings. It is a well-known white fantasy to purchase a home or apartment that has disgusting carpet and then to pull it up to reveal a beautiful hardwood floor underneath. — Christian Lander

He [Winston Churchill] is a man suffering from petrified adolescence. — Aneurin Bevan

Nature is a petrified magic city. — Novalis

Ever feel like you're always winding up and never throwing it out? You might blame it on perfectionism or procrastination or preparation. You may even call it prudent. But whatever it is...IT'S NOT WORKING. I call this phenomenon "petrified performance." Where you're busy, busy, busy (on the wrong activities or the right activities for too long), and never accomplishing the idea or task you set out to do. You're stuck. Like a tree that once was lively is now dead and immovable like a stone. What once was a fluid idea is now frozen in time. How do you overcome petrified performance? With practice, silly. Everything you do should be considered a "project" because projects have a beginning and an end with a timeline. No more dreaming. Wake up and put those dreams to work by putting the steps necessary to make them happen on the calendar. Are you willing to practice? That's my prescription. — Richie Norton

I remember my first show was a live TV show in Ireland, and I was just petrified. It was horrific. — Caroline Corr

I was dreading all of the ghost stories of working on American television, not in the least, the length. In Britain, a series is six episodes of an hour drama, maybe sometimes eight, but never twenty-two, so I was petrified of that. — Lennie James

Of course the people in the metro didn't see a thing! ... what a joke! petrified ratlets! but they'll still come out to refute me! make claims! ... that nothing got bombed! ... squished! powdered! that the firmament was calm, and me, I imagined the whole thing! chrysanthemums, sprays, roses! why, there's no more any such thing as sky-hooking shrapnel than there is anal ice cream! it's all in my mind! hallucinations and bullshit! what a crook! but I repeat and reassert! shrapnel and fiery lace stretched from one end of the horizon to the other! with lots of glow-worms mixed in ... and dancing purple fireflies ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

But like all beautiful faces Emily's made you believe that its possessor was a better person than she was. It allowed her to pass for stoical when she was petrified, and mysterious and aloof when she was so filled with self-doubt that she bought presents for other people when it was her birthday, framed most of her conversation in terms of apology and regret, and for all her talent could no longer manage to string twenty-five paragraphs fo prose together to make a short story. — Michael Chabon

Nightmares are a strange thing. Your worst fear is sometimes something you enjoy thinking about, for some strange reason. I don't know why that is, but it's some kind of fantasy that people play out. "What would I do to protect my children? I'd do anything." And then, you watch it play out. I'm petrified of such a thing. — Ethan Hawke

Why are you still smiling? You're supposed to fear my mighty wrath." His shoulders shook with silent laughter. "In case you can't tell, I'm petrified." "You will be if my mighty wrath is ever unleashed. Stop laughing! — Suzanne Wright

Sometimes I hear the world discussed as the realm of men. This is not my experience. I have watched men fall to the ground like leaves. They were swept up as memories, and burned. History owns them. These men were petrified in both senses of the word: paralyzed and turned to stone. Their refusal to express feeling killed them. Anachronistic men. Those poor, poor boys. — Antonella Gambotto-Burke