“... 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.”
“And that lack of fear has gotten me into a lot of trouble and cost me a lot of happiness. God intended women to be timid frightened creatures and there's something unnatural about a woman who isn't afraid... Scarlett, always save something to fear—even as you save something to love...”
“You are right to be afraid," he said, "but where does this fear lead you? Nowhere. You must let go of fear.”
“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...”
“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.”
“Writing of the narrative kind, and perhaps all writing, is motivated deep down, by a fear or and fascination with mortality - by a desire to make the risky trip to the underworld and to bring something or someone back from the dead. ”
“Fear can give you urgent wings.”