“All my moments which were not consumed with efforts to escape the cold were absorbed with morbid Poe-like fancies. One night, in a dream, I saw my own corpse, hair stiff with ice and eyes wide open.”— Donna Tartt, amazon.com
“She lay there on a bed that inexorably became a bed of ashes and hot coals, while her imagination dwelt on every conceivable disaster, from his having forsaken her for another woman to his having, somehow, ended up in the morgue. And as the night faded from black to gray to daylight, the telephone b…”— James Baldwin, amazon.com
“Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes. With his hands still in his coat pockets he stalked by me into the hall, turned sharply as if he were on a wire, and disappeared into the living-room.”— Francis Scott Fitzgerald, amazon.com
“After those paroxysms of deadly horror, when he had howled, flung himself about and tried frantically to tear something away from his eyes, he lapsed into a state of semi-consciousness. Then presently there would loom up once more that unbearable mountain of oppression, which was only comparable wit…”— Vladimir Nabokov, amazon.com
“They tried closing their eyes and going to sleep, but they couldn't tell the difference between sleep and being awake. They seemed to be caught in some sort of trap, and they tossed and moaned and finally Marion bolted up in bed, gasping for breath and Harry put the light on, You alright?”— Hubert Selby Jr., amazon.com
“It tossed and tossed, — A little brig I knew, — O’ertook by blast, It spun and spun, And groped delirious, for morn.”— Emily Dickinson, amazon.com
“Ever been in a spelling bee as a kid? That snowy second after the announcement of the word as you sift your brain to see if you can spell it? It was like that, the blank panic.”— Gillian Flynn, amazon.com
“Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in … this was civilization as I saw it, colossal and jagged …”— Bret Easton Ellis, amazon.com
“But how can I put this? I can’t keep my head above water one minute to the next: it’s not just the parties and the goo-gooing with what’s-her-name, I’ve got to decide how long the Five Hundredth Anniversary Parade is going to be and where does it start and when does it start and which nobleman gets…”— William. The Princess Bride: S Goldman, amazon.com
“It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you’ve made, and there’s this panic because you don’t know yet the scale of disaster you’ve left yourself open to.”— Kazuo Ishiguro, amazon.com
“He bent his head back toward the ceiling and breathed out a short pained sigh or moan. He dropped his hands, worried them in quick circles, clapped them to the top of his head again. His movements were spastic and strange, the movements of a person whose thoughts have become toxic.”— Chad Harbach, amazon.com
“And so the months had mounted, Pella lying in bed in their sunstruck loft, dragging herself to the Rite Aid and the psychiatrist and back again, David alternately peeved and given purpose by her somnolence. There were events, fights, excursions, but none of it mattered, none of it penetrated the thi…”— Chad Harbach, amazon.com
“As I sit on the folding metal chair I begin to fear getting up. As the finale approaches, I experience outright panic. What if my feet no longer move? What if my muscles lock?”— Joan Didion, amazon.com
“The familiar panic at feeling misperceived is rising, and my chest bumps and thuds. I expend energy on remaining utterly silent in my chair, empty, my eyes two great pale zeros. People have promised to get me through this.”— David Foster Wallace, amazon.com
“I was lost in the anxiety of the moment. I was crying and trying not to breathe too loudly.”— Bret Easton Ellis, amazon.com
“He understood, viscerally, what it meant when people said their hearts were in their throats, although it wasn’t just his heart he could feel but all his organs thrusting upward, trying to exit him through his mouth, his innards scrambled with anxiety.”— Hanya Yanagihara, amazon.com
“Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.”— Anaïs Nin, amazon.com