T. S. Eliot Quotes

I'm afraid of me.

My day-to-day local issues are rooted in an underlying fear of death.

Fear of self is the greatest of all terrors, the deepest of all dread, the commonest of all mistakes. From it grows failure. Because of it, life is a mockery. Out of it comes despair.

My defenses were so great. The cocky rock and roll hero who knows all the answers was actually a terrified guy who didn't know how to cry. Simple.

No one's ever dared come out and say it before, but there's not a man among us that doesn't think it, that doesn't feel just as you do about her and the whole business - feel it somewhere down deep in his scared little soul.

Many are whispering that Voldemort must be behind it. However, that is the point: They whisper. They daren’t confide in each other, not knowing whom to trust; they are scared to speak out, in case their suspicions are true and their families are targeted. Yes, Voldemort is playing a very clever game. Declaring himself might have provoked open rebellion: Remaining masked has created confusion, uncertainty, and fear.

When we fear things I think that we wish for them ... every fear hides a wish

April 27. Incapable of living with people, of speaking. Complete immersion in myself, thinking of myself. Apathetic, witless, fearful. I have nothing to say to anyone - never.

According to the state of a man's conscience, so do hope and fear on account of his deeds arise in his mind.

Real danger is nothing more than just living. Of course, living is merely the chaos of existence, but more than that it's a crazy mixed-up business of dismantling existence instant by instant to the point where the original chaos is restored, and taking strength from the uncertainty and the fear that chaos brings to re-create existence instant by instant. You won't find another job as dangerous as that. There isn't any fear in existence itself, or any uncertainty, but living creates it.

The worst thing in the world is having to go back to the dark you shook off.

The things I fear may all be imaginary, so what I fear most is my imagination.

Nighttime is different. Things are otherwise when the world is black. Insecurities and hurts, anxieties and fears grow teeth at night. p493

The worst evils of life are those which do not exist except in our imagination.

I was on the verge of jumping into one of those holes in life out of which we emerge a bit tattered and bloody, though we remain sure nonetheless that we had to make the jump.

Everybody's got a hunger no matter where they are. Everybody clings to their own fear. Everybody hides some scar - Precious pain. Empty and cold but it keeps me alive. I gave it my soul so that I could survive - keeping me safe in these chains.

I had nothing to fear from my father. Except his disappointment. Which was no small thing.

There was once a man, Harry, called the steppenwolf. He went on two legs, wore clothes and was a human being, but nevertheless he was in reality a wolf of the steppes. He had learned a good deal of all that people of a good intelligence can, and was a fairly clever fellow. What he had not learned, however, was this: to find contentment in himself and his own life.

It’s not wondering what I breathe in, but who, that threatens to choke me.

O foolish anxiety of wretched man, how inconclusive are the arguments which make thee beat thy wings below!

Writing plays for me is often an act of looking at basement-level fears in terms of where they come from.

What happens with you when you begin to feel uneasy, unsettled, queasy? Notice the panic, notice when you instantly grab for something. (51)

Insecurity's best cover is perfectionism. That's where it becomes an art form.