I write repeatedly—against my will—of those things I fear most happening. Losing a loved one, losing a parent, losing a child. I'm in terror of losing a child. It's never happened to me, but I am clearly compelled to write about it over and over again, and in a way I think, psychologically at least, this says more about me autobiographically as a novelist than the fact that Danny Angel goes to the Iowa Writers Workshop and has Kurt Vonnegut as a teacher, which I also did.

Fear of loss is stronger than desire for gain.

the fear of loss is greater than the desire for gain.

He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss.

I'm so afraid of losing something I love, that I refuse to love anything. (p. 216)

I'm so afraid of losing something I love that I refuse to love anything

I felt loss at every hand. The
loss of self-esteem is a celebrated symptom, and my own sense of self
had all but disappeared, along with any self-reliance. This loss can
quickly degenerate into dependence, and from dependence into infantile
dread. One dreads the loss of all things, all people close and dear.
There is an acute fear of abandonment.

If we fear loss enough, in the end the things we possess will come to possess us.

What matters isn't what a person has or doesn't have; it is what he or she is afraid of losing.

The fear is for what is still to be lost.

...the perception of potential threats to survival may be much more important in determining behavior than the perceptions of potential profits, so that profit maximization is not really the driving force. It is fear of loss rather than hope of gain that limits our behavior

We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it's our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand.

For most people, the fear of loss is much greater than the desire for gain. Which

For most people, the fear of loss is much greater than the desire for gain.