“You are right to be afraid," he said, "but where does this fear lead you? Nowhere. You must let go of fear.”

“Mothers were the only ones you could depend on to tell the whole, unvarnished truth.”

“In some instances, it may unfortunately be necessary for a Wife to seek outside employment, such as when the husband is dismembered or is dead.”

“Yeah, you are kind of a dumbass.”

“Immortality,' said Crake, ' is a concept. If you take 'mortality' as being, not death, but the foreknowledge of it and the fear of it, then 'immortality' is the absence of such fear. Babies are immortal. Edit out the fear, and you'll be...”

“... there's fear that keeps you safe, and fear that warns you, and then there's fear of another sort. The kind that makes you turn on your friends, that irises the world down to one frightened person.”

“Don't be scared," Willa Mae said.I looked at her. "Aren't you scared?"Willa Mae looked at me and said, "Shoot. Only thing I'm afraid of is that I'm going to do something I'll regret.""Being scared is just one more thing to turn into what you want it to be," Willa Mae said. "The thing with fear is, it's like anger. You've got to change it into something else. Make it your weapon. Some can just turn it into smarts. The best of 'em can turn fear and anger into love." She looked out toward our neighborhood. "I'm not there yet.”