I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the grab of mild-mannered doubt, slips …showed first 75 words of 430 total…

…showed last 75 words of 430 total…memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which you speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.