Even though the risks of death are higher driving than flying, many people would rather drive simply because they feel they have more control driving. The facts are that only a few hundred people die a year flying, and 44,000 are killed a year driving.

She had lost all our memories for ever, and it was as though by dying she had robbed me of part of myself. I was losing my individuality. It was the first stage of my own death, the memories dropping off like gangrened limbs.

A single feat of daring can alter the whole conception of what is possible.

The more bare a life is, the more we fear change.

He had been frightened and so he had been vehement.

I'm afraid of the dark.' And his mother: 'Don't be silly. You know there's nothing to be afraid in the dark.' But he knew hte falsity of the reasoning; he knew how they taught also that there was nothing to fear in death, and how fearfully they avoided the idea of it.

The argument of danger only applies to those who live in relative safety. (The Power and the Glory)

I had no memory at all of Sarah and I was completely free from anxiety, jealousy, insecurity, hate: my mind was a blank sheet on which somebody had just been on the point of writing a message of happiness. I felt sure that when my memory came back, the writing would continue and that I should be happy.

It was as thought he were on the verge of acceptance into a new country; like a refugee he watched the consul lift his pen to fill in the final details of his via. But the refugee remains apprehensive to the last; he has had too many experiences of the sudden afterthought, the fresh question or requirement, the strange official who comes into the room carrying another file.

five years work many changes. At the end of a war all our portraits are out of date: the timid man had been given a gun to slay with, and the brave man had found is nerve fail him in the barrage.

Terror was always just behind her shoulder: she was wasted by the effort of not turning round. She dressed up her fear, so that she could look at it—in the form of fever, rats, unemployment. The real thing was taboo—death coming nearer every year in the strange place: everybody packing up and leaving, while she stayed in a cemetery no one visited, in a big aboveground tomb.

Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones.