A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares: Best 80 Quotes on Conquering Fear

Krystal Sutherland’s novel “A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares” tells the story of a family haunted by fear. The book uses simple yet powerful words to talk about how we face the things that scare us most.

The story follows Esther Solar, a girl whose family members each have one terrible fear that controls their lives. Her father won’t leave the basement. Her brother can’t stand the dark. Her mother fears bad luck. Esther tries to avoid developing her own great fear by staying away from anything scary.

When Esther meets Jonah, an old classmate, they begin a journey to face fears together. Their friendship grows as they challenge phobias one by one.

The quotes from this book speak to anyone who has felt afraid, anxious, or trapped by worry. They also show how love, family, and friendship can help us be brave. Through Esther and Jonah’s story, we learn that sometimes facing our fears is the only way to truly live.

These words from the book remind us that we are not alone in our struggles with fear and that courage often comes from unexpected places.

A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares Quotes

These are my favorite quotes so far from the book:

“The old fear was there, the grapnel anchor lodged in her chest, the thing that wanted to pull her back away from the edge and whisper no, no, no. Yet there was a new thing: a lure. Something down in the water that whispered yes, yes, yes. Go forward, onward, into the unknown. It felt like something between destruction and thrill”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
“If something was once true but not wasn’t, was it ever true?”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
“Look, fearless people are stupid, ‘cause they don’t even understand what fear is. If I was fearless, I’d jump out of a plane without a parachute, or eat your mom’s cooking again. …”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
“What monstrous creatures humans would be if they could not die.”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
“The worst part was that anxiety didn’t just affect the way you thought, or the way you talked, or the way you were around others it affected the way your heart beat. The way you breathed. What you ate. How you slept. Anxiety felt like a grapnel anchor had been pickaxed into your back, one prong in each lung, one through the heart, one through the spine, the weight curving your posture forward, dragging you down to the murky depths of the sea floor. The good news was that you kind of got used to it after a while. Got used to the gasping, brink-of-heart-attack feeling that followed you everywhere. All you had to do was grab one of the prongs that stuck out from the bottom of your sternum, give it a little shake, and say, “Listen, asshole. We’re not dying. We have shit to do.”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
“The goddess of crustaceans, our lady of hard exoskeletons.”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
“Sometimes you’re brave if you run. Sometimes you’re brave if you stay. It’s important to know the difference.”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
“Everyone we let into our lives has the power to hurt us. Sometimes they will and sometimes they won’t, but that’s not a reflection of us, or our strength. Loving someone who hurts you doesn’t make you weak.”
“Staying with someone who hurts you does, though.”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares

“Everyone we let into our lives has the power to hurt us. Sometimes they will, and sometimes they won’t, but that’s not a reflection of us, or our strength. Loving someone who hurts you doesn’t make you weak.”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
“Anxiety felt like a grapnel anchor had been pickaxed into your back, one prong in each lung, one through the heart, one through the spine, the weight curving your posture forward, dragging you down to the murky depths of the sea floor. The good news was that you kind of got used to it after a while. Got used to the gasping, brink-of-heart-attack feeling that followed you everywhere. All you had to do was grab one of the prongs that stuck out from the bottom of your sternum, give it a little shake, and say, “Listen, asshole. We’re not dying. We have shit to do.”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares

“Point is, you gotta be scared. Fear protects you. You gotta be scared right down to your bones” – he touched his fingertips to her collarbone – “for bravery to mean anything.”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
“She’d passed the fear barrier, and she’d lived, and she’d discovered not certain death, as she’d imagined, but impossible splendor. What other beautiful things had fear been hiding from her? What else had the curse long kept her from discovering? For the first time in a long time, she wanted to find out.”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
“Sometimes it was better to not get what you wanted. Sometimes it was better to leave beautiful things alone for fear of breaking them.”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
“One day,” he said, “everybody’s gonna wake up and realize their parents are human beings, just like them. Sometimes they’re good people, sometimes they’re not.”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
“That’s the problem. That’s what’s wrong with love. Once you love someone, no matter who they are, you’ll always let them destroy you. Every single time.”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
“Like HIV, depression was a king at playing hide-and-seek. It concealed itself in reservoirs deep inside the mind, waiting for the walls you built around it to eventually erode. Depression could be at undetectable levels for months or years. You’d be all happy and stable and think you were cured, you were a survivor, and then BAM, out of nowhere it resurged.”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
“Of course it’s not going to be easy. You’re fighting a war against yourself. Every time either side makes ground, you’re the one who gets hurt. But it’s not about winning the war against your demons. It’s about calling a truce and learning how to live with them peacefully. Promise me you’ll keep fighting. -Esther”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
“How could death not be appealing, when the only thing that gave him comfort in life was being unconscious?”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
“The magic had started to degrade, and Rosemary had slowly but surely become thoroughly, gruesomely human. And there were few things worse in this world than humans.”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
“Once you love someone, no matter who they are, you’ll always let them destroy you. Every single time. Even the very best people found ways to hurt the ones they loved.”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
“Everything you want is on the other side of fear”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
“If you didn’t let people get close to you, they couldn’t hurt you when they left.”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
“Esther wanted to make her brother understand that he was the sun. That he was bright and burning and brilliant, and without his warmth, without his gravity to orient herself around, she would be nothing. She wished they had that psychic twin thing, that she could push images into his head and make him see. Make him see that he was everything.” ― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares

“Was it so bad to hold onto something that was broken?”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
“Death is not cruel, but it is insistent.”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
“Was love enough? If a person could offer you nothing but broken promises and disappointment, was love enough to make up for that?”― Krystal Sutherland, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares