Terry Pratchett Quotes

As a human, if you're in a scary situation, you pretty much forget about everything else! You just try and survive.

On the whole, when the unexpected danger happens to you, you're thinking so fast, you're thinking so hard, every bit of you is alive to 'What should I do?' 'What can I do?' There isn't a lot of time for contemplation.

I've always been fascinated with adrenaline; it's saved my life more than once, and it's caused me to need it to save my life more than once. One of the most fascinating responses in human evolution, adrenaline sharpens your brain; it sharpens your responses.

You go into this survival instinct mode, when you feel like your life is in jeopardy. I found myself in the bathroom with my taser, which I have 10 of, my panic button and my cell phone. It was the most terrifying experience I've ever had in my life

The purpose of fear, clearly, is to help you get away - which it does. If your heart rate increases, there is more blood pumping so you can use that blood to fuel your muscles to run away. Oxygen is sent to the lungs so you can run fast. Pupils dilating help you see in the dark. All of that prepares your body to fight or escape.

When we are exposed to a real or perceived threatening situation, powerful things happen in the brain to memorialize aspects of the event, including all manner of associated circumstances like where, when and how it occurred.

A doctor once told me that with crying you aren't sure what its derivation is. If someone comes at you with a knife, you don't cry: you scream, you try to run. When it's over and you're OK, that's when you cry.

Just like an animal, when you want to survive, you don't think anymore.

I'm interested in how we react when we're heavily pressed. When we're vulnerable and our survival is in question, how do we behave?

There are two kinds of people in crisis situations - those who fight and those who freeze. I'm a freezer, and that's just going by the couple of surprise birthday parties I've had thrown for me.

No one is depressed when they're being chased by a bear.

A living creature develops a destructive impulse when it wants to destroy a source of danger... The original motive is not pleasure in destruction... I destroy in a dangerous situation because I want to live and do not want to have any anxiety. In short, the impulse to destroy serves a primary biological will to live.

All the general fear I've been feeling condenses into an immediate fear of this girl, this predator who might kill me in seconds. Adrenaline shoots through me and I sling the pack over one shoulder and run full-speed for the woods. I can hear the blade whistling toward me and reflexively hike the pack up to protect my head. The blade lodges in the pack. Both straps on my shoulders now, I make for the trees. Somehow I knew the girl will not pursue me. That she'll be drawn back into the Cornucopia before all the good stuff is gone. A grin crosses my face. Thanks for the knife, I think.

When threatened, the nervous system sometimes goes into a 'freeze response.' You assess the risk and determine that fight or flight doesn't help you. Staying put does.

In 2000, I got stuck in the sea off Cyprus after I fell off a boat. I was out there for over an hour. I am not a strong swimmer, but adrenaline kicked in, and I swam back.

If people are shooting at you, it's human nature to be afraid. I was afraid. I'll be quite blunt about that.

When you get hit to the body, you don't even worry about your face no more.

Fear and hatred can be the things that drive you. I don't always think of fear as a bad thing, it gives you fight-or-flight.

In the right circumstances, terror is good. It makes you focus.

I tend to panic and fear on a low-grade level every day, but when something really disastrous happens, I kick into super high gear; a kind of transcendent, save-everybody mind-set.

If a man puts a lion's family in jeopardy, what would it do? Would it enjoy fighting? Of course it wouldn't, but it's going to fight.

I'm scared of any fighter I've ever fought because they are some dangerous people to be dealing with. That's also where the anxiety comes from.

When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.

What don't kill me... Had better start running!

Fear, in evolution, has a special prominence: perhaps more than any other emotion it is crucial for survival.