"Until now, Eilis had always presumed that she would live in the town all her life, as her mother had done, knowing everyone, having the same friends and neighbors, the same routines in the same streets.  She had expected that she would find a job in the town, and then marry someone and give up the job and have children.  Now, she felt that she was being singled out for something for which she was not in any way prepared, and this, despite the fear it carried with it, gave her a feeling, or more a set of feelings, she thought she might experience in the days before her wedding, days in which everyone looked at her in the rush of arrangements with light in their eyes, days in which she herself was fizzy with excitement but careful not to think too precisely about what the next few weeks would be like in case she lost her nerve."
-Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

"But it wasn't anything like the fear that accompanied my drowning nightmare - harrowing and visceral.  No, this fear made me feel fizzy.  Hopeful. 

In fact, this fear felt like waking up to discover I am still here."
-The Start of Me and You by Emery Lord

"But for the most part, it's the rest of the sharp and rigid world that wants to drown you, knock your teeth out, cave your skull in when you're going down.  I develop a new consciousness, at all times wondering, What am I near?  What would it do to my body if I fell on it/into it right now?  I learn you can't trust coffee table corners, rooftop edges.  You can't trust urinals either - massive grinning underbites that would get a good laugh out of leaving me to be discovered unconscious, pants down, molars scattered across the linoleum.  Hard things, tall things, and wet things - double-crossing murders.  Bathtubs are my personal nemesis though - hard, wet, and untrustworthy.  Porcelain caskets.  For a while we crack the doors during my baths so my parents can rush in if they hear splashing.  Then I switch to showers altogether."
-How To Ruin Everything by George Watsky

"There's nothing scarier than hearing someone you love cry, except imagining a world where that sound stops.  Suddenly I can't breathe.  Can't be here.  There's nothing scarier than loving someone."
-The Love That Split the World by Emily Henry

"You all know fear is poison in battle."
-Illuminae by Jay Kristoff and Amie Kaufman

"It isn't always comfortable or easy - carrying your fear around with you on your great and ambitious road trip, I mean - but it's always worth it, because if you can't learn to travel comfortably alongside your fear, then you'll never be able to go anywhere interesting or do anything interesting."
-Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

"His hands grip the wheel, his knuckles white, and I stare at them for a moment, lost in a memory of him teaching me to write, his fingers gently guiding my own.  This is the man who gave me words.  But he didn't listen when I tried to use them."
-Something Real by Heather Demetrois

"There are degrees of obsession, of awareness, of grief, of insanity.  Those days and nights in the motel room I wished each of them against the other.  I tried to make sense of what had happened, but each time I came up short.  Each time I thought I may have understood, some line of logic snapped and I was thrust back into not knowing.

It's a dark place, not knowing. 

It's difficult to surrender to. 

But I guess it's where we live most of the time.  I guess it's where we all live, so maybe it doesn't have to be so lonely.  Maybe I can settle into it, cozy up to it, make a home inside uncertainty." 
-We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

"But she did not go.  Either she could not find the time, or she could not fine the energy, or it seemed a great distance to Market Square, or she remembered that on her own she was in danger from Wizard Howl - anyway, every day it seemed more difficult to go and see her sister.  It was very odd.  Sophie had always thought she was nearly as strong-minded as Lettie.  Now she was finding that there were some things she could only do when were no excuses left." 
-Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

"What made me think I wanted life to be interesting?" she asked as she ran.  "I'd be far too scared.  It comes of being the eldest of three."
-Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

"Until recently, I lived in a world where lost things could always be replaced.  But it has been made overwhelmingly clear to me now that anything you think is yours by right can vanish, and what you can do about that is nothing at all.  The future I thought I was meticulously crafting for years has disappeared, and with it have gone my ideas about the kind of life I'd imagined I was due.

People have been telling me since I was a little girl that I was too fervent, too forceful, too much.  I thought I had harnessed the power of my own strength and greed and love in a life that could contain it.  But it was exploded."
- The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy

"But you can never tell with shadows.  You have to be vigilant, always, because maybe you're crazy, but maybe you're right." 
- The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy