William Empson Quotes

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.

The only thing I am afraid of is fear.

It takes a long time to realize a situation is for real, and then you finally face it.

I am always the type of person who is waiting for the other shoe to drop and for it to peter out and end. And if it does that's fine.

After you find out all the things that can go wrong, your life becomes less about living and more about waiting.

You don't say, 'I've done it!' You come, with a kind of horrible desperation, to realize that this will do.

We fear only what we haven’t understood.

...we all must admit that everything is fine and there's no need in the world to worry, and in fact we should realize what it would mean to us to UNDERSTAND that we're not REALLY worried about ANYTHING.

She was no longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting herself to their clearest perception.

The image of the presence, whatever it was, waiting there for him to go -this image had not yet been so concrete for his nerves as when he stopped short of the point at which certainty would have come to him. For, with all his resolution, or more exactly with all his dread, he did stop short - he hung back from really seeing. The risk was too great and his fear too definite: it took at this moment an awful specific form.

A great deal of fear is a result of just “not knowing.” We do not know what is involved in a new situation. We do not know whether we can deal with it. The sooner we learn what it entails, the sooner we can dissolve our fear.

You dont know what you do, everytime you walk into the room-- I'm afraid to move.

Fear is the emotion that makes us blind.

The Administration of the United States is such dread I almost feel paralyzed.

I'm waiting for the floor to drop out from under me.

Flight is essential, but I can't let my fear show.

It is folly to fear what cannot be avoided.

In a lot of ways, certain things, it feels like they're never going to go away. The best thing to do is continue to ask questions, look that fear in the eye.

I know what the fear is. The fear is not for what is lost. What is lost is already in the wall. What is lost is already behind the locked doors. The fear is for what is still to be lost.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

You're nervous because you're afraid of the outcome. Accept the worst outcome... You'll be free & fight like you're able to.

Death - Death can be faced, dealt with, adjusted to, outlived. It's the not knowing that destroys interminably... This being suspended in suspense; waiting - weightless, How does one face the faceless, adjust to nothing? Waiting implies something to wait for. Is there? There is One. One who knows... I rest my soul on that.

The truth that people are missing about certain things, you know when they get fearful and they get hateful, and they repress other peoples, is the greatest truth of all, you know, the truth of love and understanding and clarity about all those issues. And it's like, one day, one day, everybody's gonna know, myself included, over certain things. But, so it's like, it's alright, you know, you hate me now, but that's cool, because I see a better day and I know that there's a higher truth, and you're wrong about hating me because I'm gay.

Once you realize something, then you can't pretend you don't know it any more.

Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.