Time & Perspective Quote by John C. Hawkes

Certainty is easy in theory; Hawkes is interested in the moment it gets expensive. The line snaps open with a calm declaration of resolve - "I didn't for a moment doubt the choice" - then immediately undercuts its own steadiness. That pivot on "but" is the tell: conviction doesn’t inoculate you against terror; it can actually sharpen it. When you choose deliberately, you can no longer hide behind accident or fate. The fear arrives not because the decision is unclear, but because it is clear.

The phrase "if life is ever fearsome" sounds almost clinical, a cool hypothetical. Hawkes then collapses the distance with "it is truly fearsome then", turning a general truth into a specific, lived crisis. He uses "then" like a trapdoor: this is the instant when consequences catch up, when the world stops being an abstract backdrop and becomes a force with teeth. The repetition of "fearsome" - first conditional, then emphatic - mimics panic tightening its grip, a mind testing whether it can name the threat without being overwhelmed by it.

Hawkes, a novelist associated with psychological extremity and situations that feel dreamlike but merciless, often writes characters into pressured chambers where interior life becomes the main weather system. Read in that light, the quote isn’t motivational; it’s diagnostic. Choice is framed as a threshold. You step through with full intention, and that very lucidity makes the stakes undeniable.