Veronica Roth Quotes

People would rather be deceived than have the truth cause them anxiety

A lot of my upbringing was about denying or fretting or evading.

When a condition or a problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But it goes inward and minces up with a lot of other things already there and what comes out is discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something--anything--before it is all gone.

Normally, we push away the things we're scared of.

I quickly laugh at everything for fear of having to cry.

I always put on a brave face when I was the most terrified, the most trapped and out of control.

I'll close my eyes really, really tight and make you all go away.

My mind shrank from the menace sweeping down on us, … vainly clinging to the fancy that great disasters only happen to other people.

As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers

There are some things which are so horrific that some people feel they can't do anything about it: that the natural, understandable response is to tune it out.

I'm very good at denial.

Morning," I say. "Shh," she says. "If you don't acknowledge it, maybe it will go away.

Obviously I wasn't playing well at the time. But as a player, you lie to yourself. You say, "There's nothing wrong. I'm just not on time [at the plate]." You make something else up because pain is not an option.

I start trying to stay unconscious. The problem with this is that no amount of willpower can change the reality.

Paranoia: the gift of the survivor and the burden of the overtired, stressed, and terrified.

It is so much simpler to bury reality than it is to dispose of dreams

I bear the wounds of all the battles I avoided.

You need to face what you're running from

But sometimes living in denial was the only way to keep a man from going on a killing spree.

I'd chosen instead to just change my route, go miles out of the way, as if avoiding it would make it go away once and for all.

Denial can be a pathology or a survival mechanism - and sometimes it's both.

When we hide from the world in this way, we feel secure. We may think we have quieted our fear, but we are actually making ourselves numb with fear. We surround ourselves with our own familiar thoughts, so that nothing sharp or painful can touch us.

The evasions of her little novel were exactly those of her life. Everything she did not wish to confront was also missing from her novella--and was necessary to it.

I am not going to think about it. It was ugly, but it’s over, and I’m not going to think about it.

To fear to face an issue is to believe that the worst is true.