Just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention on a question that is as important in life as it is in literature: What will happen next?

Source: "What Fear Can Teach Us." TEDGlobal 2012. Jun. 2012. Conference Presentation. Additional Information: This quote is from novelist Karen Thompson Walker's 2012 TED Talk about the usefulness of fear and how our worries relate to the imagination and to literature. The quote means that both anxieties (fears) and novels are fixated on the question of what will occur in the future. Says Walker, fear is a kind of unintentional storytelling that we are all born knowing how to do. Watch the full TED Talk here: Karen Thompson Walker - What Fear Can Teach Us  

“What Fear Can Teach Us.” TEDGlobal 2012. Jun. 2012. Conference Presentation.