I’m kind of claustrophobic… It’s not even like enclosed spaces. It’s like I hate being stuck in one band, you know? Just being stuck is the biggest drag, for fear that, you know, just that you can’t get out.

We shall never be able to remove suspicion and fear as potential causes of war until communication is permitted to flow, free and open, across international boundaries.

Exercise is really important to me – it’s therapeutic. So if I’m ever feeling tense or stressed or like I’m about to have a meltdown, I’ll put on my iPod and head to the gym or out on a bike ride along Lake Michigan with the girls.

We humans have lost the wisdom of genuinely resting and relaxing. We worry too much. We don’t allow our bodies to heal, and we don’t allow our minds and hearts to heal.

As a rule, men worry more about what they can’t see than about what they can.

I’m wallowing in the whole idea of just being a guy out there with a band, with songs. It’s a real enjoyment.

If I’d found out that Norman Mailer liked me. I’d have killed myself.

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.

U2 is an original species… there are colours and feelings and emotional terrain that we occupy that is ours and ours alone.

Fear is not a lasting teacher of duty.

I have this feeling that the world is not in balance. And people are afraid, but we’re also starting to be really brave.

Keeping an active mind has been vital to my survival, as has been maintaining a sense of humor.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

I was a grade B housewife, maybe a B minus. But when I got time to write, I would be unable to finish a sentence. I had anxiety attacks. Partly it was a way of personifying the situation because I couldn’t breathe. I was surrounded by people and by duties. I was a housewife and the children’s mother, and I was judged on how I performed those roles.

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

I think it’s very important to cry in the shower and not in front of them. They need to know that everything’s going to be all right, even when you’re not sure it is.

In this business, by the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late to save yourself. Unless you’re running scared all the time, you’re gone.

If you keep feeling a point that has been sharpened, the point cannot long preserve its sharpness.

Fear, separation, hate and anger come from the wrong view that you and the Earth are two separate entities, the Earth is only the environment. You are in the centre and you want to do something for the Earth in order for you to survive. That is a dualistic way of seeing.

I am alone; I am always alone no matter what.

Timidity makes a person modest. It makes him or her say, ‚I’m not worthy of being written up in the record of deeds in heaven or on earth.‘ Timidity keeps people from their good. They are afraid to say, ‚Yes, I deserve it.‘

I don’t carry the burden of the past or the madness of the future. I live in the present.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

As long as the people don’t fear the truth, there is hope. For once they fear it, the one who tells it doesn’t stand a chance. And today, truth is still beautiful… but so frightening.

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

He who dreads hostility too much is unfit to rule.

Kids who have an understanding of how and why their feelings are what they are are much more likely to talk to us about what’s happening, and they have better skills to work it out.

Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.

I believe the American people have a genuine and justifiable fear of government intrusion in what they instinctively know is going to be an ever more intrusive world.

When I was in my teens I had issues with OCD.

As a vulnerability researcher, the greatest barrier I see is our low tolerance for vulnerability. We’re almost afraid to be happy. We feel like it’s inviting disaster.

There are going to be good days and bad days. Bottom line.

Life is too short for long-term grudges.

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.

It’s not morbid to talk about death. Most people don’t worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

It seems like we wake up and it’s a race until you get to bed. It gets to you after a while and you think, ‚What the hell am I doing?‘

Don’t just let the devil use your mind as a garbage dump.

If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.

Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.

Sometimes, women in families put themselves last until it manifests itself in their own health.

The truth is, I had always wanted to be a comedian, but I really didn’t have that kind of personality, and it’s a terrifying thing to say.

I’m sure the feeling of fear, as long as you can take advantage of it and not be rendered useless by it, can make you extend yourself beyond what you would regard as your capacity. If you’re afraid, the blood seems to flow freely through the veins, and you really do feel a sense of stimulation.

Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.

At the start of the season, there are 16 teams in the top division looking behind them, making sure they avoid relegation. The fear starts in the boardroom, comes down to managers and through to players. The fans sense it.

Pound’s crazy. All poets are. They have to be. You don’t put a poet like Pound in the loony bin.

If you have fear, you are bound by tradition, you follow some leader or guru. When you are bound by tradition, when you are afraid of your husband or your wife, you lose your dignity as an individual human being.

O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad!

I briefly did therapy, but after a while, I realised it is just like a farmer complaining about the weather. You can’t fix the weather – you just have to get on with it.

From the time that ‚Nevermind‘ came out in September of 1991 to the time that Nirvana was over, it was really just a few years, and a lot happened in those few years.

I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.

I’ve often said there’s nothing better for the inside of a man than the outside of a horse.

We can fear things into existence. Fear looks into the future and imagines the worst that can happen.

If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.

We of the sinking middle class may sink without further struggles into the working class where we belong, and probably when we get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared, for, after all, we have nothing to lose.

I more fear what is within me than what comes from without.

I’ve had some dark nights of the soul, of course, but giving in to depression would be a sellout, a defeat.

We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It’s a death trap.

Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.

The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.