Why do people do things that they fear? It may be that the fear contains information. Something can be interesting if you get to the other side of that fear.

Fear and pain and suffering is not OK for any being to feel intentionally at the hands of us.

My fear is that, as soon as I get married and have kids that I'll kind of do what a lot of people do and suddenly start making, 'Now I'm gonna make films for kids.' I really hope I don't do that.

Freedom is contagious. That's why despots fear it so much.

I began to fear that Mos Def was being treated as a product, not a person, so I've been going by Yasiin since '99. At first it was just for friends and family, but now I'm declaring it openly.

I find writing very difficult. It's hard and it hurts sometimes, and it's scary because of the fear of failure and the very unpleasant feeling that you may have reached the limit of your abilities.

Respect and fear are two different things.

The thing about Republicans is that they don't care so much about respect, but they love fear, at least in others.

A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.

I think we have lost our groove as a country. One of the reasons was the attack on 9/11. We got knocked off our game. From a country that always exported hope we went into the business of exporting fear.