You live in this shadow that you're going to burn in Hell until you're saved. And I still worry about it a little. I don't believe in Heaven but I do still fear Hell.

Honest to God all my life I have had such a fear of spiders. In fact I use to have a reoccurring dream about one. Very clearly it was black with a red head. It would sit up in the corner of the bedroom and when it started getting closer I would wake up in a panic.

For me it's important to be in balance. To not let fear get in the way of things to not worry so much about protecting yourself all the time.

What people fear most about tragedy is its randomness - a taxi cab jumps the curb and hits a pedestrian a gun misfires and kills a bystander. Better to have some rational cause and effect between incident and injury. And if cause and effect aren't possible better that there at least be some reward for all the suffering.

Roosevelt talked not only about Freedom from Fear but also Freedom from Want.

Being a parent is not for the faint of heart. I may joke about knowing fear but the fact is the first time I ever knew real fear was the day Charlotte my first child was born. Suddenly there is someone in the world you care about more than anything.

I never discuss a novel while I'm writing it for fear that talking about it will diminish my desire to write it.

Uncertainty and fear and ignorance about immigrants about people who are different has a history as old as our Nation.

We tell lies when we are afraid... afraid of what we don't know afraid of what others will think afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie the thing that we fear grows stronger.

I had to confront my fears and master my every demonic thought about inferiority insecurity or the fear of being black young and gifted in this Western culture.

You can ask me pretty much anything. There'll be things I'll go 'That feels a little too personal.' But most things I don't have a fear of being asked about.

We all have that burning question about what happens if we lose somebody we love especially if we lose them tragically. We wonder what fear was going on we wonder if we could have reached out and touched them held their hand looked in their eyes been there.

I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that's my one fear: that everything has happened nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again... the future is just going to be a vast conforming suburb of the soul.

I have been thinking about the notion of perfect love as being without fear and what that means for us in a world that's becoming increasingly xenophobic tortured by fundamentalism and nationalism.

No person who is enthusiastic about his work has anything to fear from life.

When you are 16 there is no fear whatsoever. As you get older you play in more important games and that is when you start thinking about what will happen if you win or lose.

My feelings for Ellen overrode all of my fear about being out as a lesbian. I had to be with her and I just figured I'd deal with the other stuff later.

Almost all the ideas we have about being a man or being a woman are so burdened with pain anxiety fear and self-doubt. For many of us the confusion around this question is excruciating.

There is nothing strange about fear: no matter in what guise it presents itself it is something with which we are all so familiar that when a man appears who is without it we are at once enslaved by him.

You feel sometimes when you hear analysts and knowledgeable people talking about Iran that they fear so much about the survival of the regime because deep down it's not a legitimate regime it doesn't represent the will of the people it's kind of morphed into kind of a military theocracy.

If you look into your own heart and you find nothing wrong there what is there to worry about? What is there to fear?

If you want to conquer fear don't sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

We consume our tomorrows fretting about our yesterdays.

One thing about being successful is that I stopped being afraid of dying. Once you're a star you're dead already. You're embalmed.