Amy Hempel Quotes

This is important! But you have to stay absolutely cool. I may be completely off-base, and panicking prematurely." "I don't think so. I think you're panicking post-maturely. In fact, if you were panicking any later it would be practically posthumously. I've been panicking for days.

His mind worked fast, flying in emergency supplies of common sense, as human minds do, to construct a huge anchor in sanity and prove that what happened hadn't really happened and, if it had happened, hadn't happened much.

I don't think anyone's found a way of eliminating thoughts of danger and loss. It's rather that, when they're unrealistic, you become an acrobat at marshaling evidence against them.

I think that was a moment of cool panic there.

If I don't think about it, it won't drive me crazy.

We all have our ways of handling fear and managing trying; jumping in or climbing down, a direct approach or a delay, joyful or miserable, a spirit of adventure, or God help me, get this thing over with.

I cannot do confrontation. You know that fight or flight thing? I'm flight. I just don't want the argument.

You can't 'work through worry and fear rationally,' because fear isn't rational!

I get really quiet when I'm nervous. I don't freak out.

When you get frustrated you try to do too much, you try to make stuff up that's not there, and you play outside yourself.

Worrying, obsessing, and controlling are illusions. They are tricks we play on ourselves.

My mental hands were empty, and I felt I must do something as a counterirritant or antibody to my hysterical alarm at getting married at the age of 43.

Anxiety and fear are cousins but not twins. Fear sees a threat. Anxiety imagines one.

I get the strange urge to hit my head against the wall. Other people's sobs make me feel uncomfortable.

In times of crisis human beings don't have it in them to be rational.

‎I have panicked unnecessarily in all four corners of the globe.

You can't control things by being nervous.

Recycle those nerves and make them adreneline.

Worry is just imagination used in an unproductive way.

Although anxiety is part of life, never let it control you.

I was just shaking and then also immediately, I had to go into 'take-care-of-business-mode' which included a change to a more healthy diet.

Fear is good, for it makes us cautious and aids survival. Not so with terror. It is like slow poison, paralyzing the limbs and blurring the mind. . . Never, when in danger, ask yourself, What will they do to me? Instead think, What can I do to prevent them?

Panic is an incredibly catalyzing creative force. And almost out of sheer necessity, I found I had to talk about myself and my real life as it is effectively lived by me.

I only work out because I have high anxiety, and if I don't I tend to... I say I'm like a border collie. If I don't have something to expend my energy, I chew the furniture. So it just helps me level out so I don't do copious amounts of drugs.

If you panic that's a good way to lose. You have to stay in control.