“Comfortless was my religion, anxiety of the anxieties, for I believed God was not love, but courage. Love came only as a reward.”

“Love is the absence of Anxiety.”

“Anxiety loves company almost as much as misery.”

“What makes a teenage boy’s anxiety so overwhelming is that a teenage boy’s socialization is the demand to perform without the resources to perform. As a result, not only are his risks many, but his failures many. And so apparent… Second, the biggest winners—the football players—are receiving love via self-abuse. For some boys, receiving love via self-abuse creates anxiety. But losing love creates even more anxiety.”

“The anxiety of falling in love could not find repose except in bed.”

“At the same time, my anxiety had turned into an anxiety quite lacking in anxiousness. And any anxiety that is not especially anxious is, in the end, an anxiety hardly worth mentioning.”

“Pride is a reaction formation to the feeling of inferiority, of the experience of powerlessness, of not being worthy enough of love. Only anxiety compels a person to lose moderation and to want to be more than he is. Out of fear of being an animal, he has to become an angel. Out of fear of being a nothing, a god. Anxiety never allows him to be simply a man.”

“The only way I can describe the extent of my anxiety is to say that I felt as if I were pregnant with a rock.”

“Love looks forward, hate looks back, anxiety has eyes all over its head.”

“My hope is that the description of God's love in my life will give you the freedom and the courage to discover... God's love in yours.”