Marilynne Robinson article

 “I hate to say it, but I think a default posture of human beings is fear.” 

“What it comes down to — and I think this has become prominent in our culture recently — is that fear is an excuse: ‘I would like to have done something, but of course I couldn’t.’ Fear is so opportunistic that people can call on it under the slightest provocations: ‘He looked at me funny.’ ”

“One of the things that bothers me, is that there are prohibitions of an unarticulated kind that are culturally felt that prevent people from actually saying what they think.”

source