Frightening Quotes - Page 19

• The only way to avoid all frightening choices is to leave society and become a hermit, and that is a frightening choice.

  Richard Bach

  Choices, Statistics, Way

  4 Copy quote

• If we think of what's up ahead, with climate change and wars over water, it's very frightening.

  Carol Ann Duffy

  War, Thinking, Water

  6 Copy quote

• The hardest period in life is one’s twenties. It’s a shame because you’re your most gorgeous, and you’re physically in peak condition. But it’s actually when you’re most insecure and full of self-doubt. When you don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s frightening.

  Helen Mirren

  Insecure, Self, Doubt

  "Helen Mirren: What I've Learned" by Cal Fussman, www.esquire.com. July 07, 2011.

  34 Copy quote

  Show source

• I must tell you that I should really like to think there's something wrong with me- Because, if there isn't, then there's something wrong with the world itself-and that's much more frightening! That would be terrible. So I'd rather believe there is something wrong with me, that could be put right.

  T. S. Eliot

  Believe, Thinking, Would Be

  T.S. Eliot (2011). “The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot”, p.400, Faber & Faber

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the most frightening things, I think, is the capacity for retroactive searching, so you can go back in time and trace who someone is in contact with and where they've been.

  Laura Poitras

  Thinking, Capacity, Go Back In Time

  "Tomgram: Laura Poitras and Tom Engelhardt, The Snowden Reboot". Interview with Tom Engelhardt, www.tomdispatch.com. October 19, 2014.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• These people walk by a widow deformed by leprosy...walk by children dressed in rags living in the street, and they think, 'Business as usual.' But if they perceive a slight against God, it is a different story. Their faces go red, their chests heave mightily, they sputter angry words. The degree of their indignation is astonishing. Their resolve is frightening.

  Yann Martel

  Children, Thinking, People

  9 Copy quote

• These are frightening times...when she feels herself annointed by loneliness.

  Carol Shields

  Loneliness, Feeling Lonely, Feels

  4 Copy quote

• It is these black clothes," said Strange. "I am like a leftover piece of funeral, condemned to walk about the Town, frightening people into thinking of their own mortality.

  Susanna Clarke

  Thinking, Clothes, People

  Susanna Clarke (2009). “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell”, p.681, Bloomsbury Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• For any couple, once you delve into the idea of non-monogamy, you're entering pretty frightening territory.

  Zoe Lister-Jones

  Couple, Ideas, Entering

  4 Copy quote

• Piracy is robbery with violence, often segueing into murder, rape and kidnapping. It is one of the most frightening crimes in the world. Using the same term to describe a twelve-year-old swapping music with friends, even thousands of songs, is evidence of a loss of perspective so astounding that it invites and deserves the derision it receives.

  Nick Harkaway

  Song, Loss, Years

  30 Copy quote

• The society to which we belong seems to be dying or is already dead. I don't mean to sound dramatic, but clearly the dark side is rising. Things could not have been more odd and frightening in the Middle Ages. But the tradition of artists will continue no matter what form the society takes. And this is another reason to write: people need us, to mirror for them and for each other without distortion-not to look around and say, 'Look at yourselves, you idiots!,' but to say, 'This is who we are.

  Anne Lamott

  Mean, Writing, Dark

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.234, Anchor

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can only read a few and those perhaps not accurately.

  John Steinbeck

  Gauges, Mass, Register

  John Steinbeck (2008). “The Winter of Our Discontent”, p.90, Penguin

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mundus vult decipi: the world wants to be deceived. The truth is too complex and frightening; the taste for the truth is an acquired taste that few acquire…. ….The world winks at dishonesty. the world does not call it dishonesty

  Walter Kaufmann

  Doe, World, Want

  10 Copy quote

• People tell their children there are no monsters in the world. They tell them that because they believe it, or they want the child to feel safe. But there are monsters, Luke, all the more frightening because they look like people.

  Nora Roberts

  Children, Believe, People

  Nora Roberts (1993). “Honest Illusions”, p.67, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What you have to do is just walk into the light. Then you find that it doesn't burn, and it's not particular frightening.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Light, Humanity

  4 Copy quote

• if a person wishes to achieve peace of mind and happiness then they should acquire faith, but if they want to be a disciple of truth, which can be "frightening and ugly,” then they need to search.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Mind, Wish, Needs

  21 Copy quote

• And now I understand something so frightening &wonderful- how the mind clings to the road it knows, rushing through crossroads, sticking like lint to the familiar.

  Mary Oliver

  Rushing, Mind, Wonderful

  24 Copy quote

• "They tell us that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, but I don't believe that." he said. Then, a moment later, he added: "Oh, the fear is there, all right. It comes to us in many different forms, at different times, and overwhelms us. But the most frightening thing we can do at such times is to turn our backs on it, to close our eyes. For then we take the most precious thing inside us and surrender it to something else. In my case, that something was the wave."

  Haruki Murakami

  Believe, Eye, Different

  "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman". Book by Haruki Murakami, 2006.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• I had been downright paranoid all afternoon, aware of everyone near me. By the time I went for the car, my neck and shoulders were knotted into one painful ache. The most frightening thing I'd seen all afternoon had been the prices on the designer clothing.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Car, Afternoon, Necks

  Laurell K. Hamilton (2009). “Guilty Pleasures”, p.144, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Young man, nature is not frightening, it's people who are frightening! You just need to get to know nature and it will become friendly. This creature known as man is of course highly intelligent, he's capable of manufacturing almost anything from rumours to test-tube babies and yet he destroys two to three species every day. This is the absurdity of man.

  Gao Xingjian

  Baby, Men, Intelligent

  Gao Xingjian (2000). “Soul Mountain”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have not seen a film as powerful, surreal, and frightening in at least a decade unprecedented in the history of cinema.

  Werner Herzog

  Powerful, Cinema, Film

  "Berlin Q&A: Director Joshua Oppenheimer" by Patrick Brzeski, www.hollywoodreporter.com. November 2, 2013.

  33 Copy quote

  Show source

• She had begun to read in the beginning as a protection from the frightening and unpleasant things. She continued because, apart from the story, literature brought with it a kind of gentility for which she craved.

  Patrick White

  Stories, Literature, Kind

  4 Copy quote

• Be grateful that you only see the outward man. Be grateful that you never see the passions, the hatreds, the jealousies, the malice, the sicknesses... Be grateful you rarely see the frightening truth in people.

  Alfred Bester

  Grateful, Passion, Men

  Alfred Bester (1978). “Demolished Man”, Pocket

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening. from "The Lady of the Haunted House

  Angela Carter

  Eye, House, Doe

  13 Copy quote

• The unknown is always frightening.

  Naveen Andrews

  6 Copy quote