Mary Karr, the acclaimed poet and memoirist known for 'The Liar's Club' and 'Lit,' delivered a raw, unforgettable commencement address at Syracuse University in May 2015. Having taught at Syracuse for thirty years, she treated the speech as deeply personal — not a lecture from a visiting dignitary but a farewell from a beloved professor. This quote came at the emotional turning point of the speech, after Karr had spent several minutes describing her own harrowing childhood — growing up in east Texas with a mother who married seven times and once tried to kill her with a butcher knife, running away to California as a teenager, watching friends go to prison or die. From that place of profound vulnerability, she offered what she had learned: fear is the true opposite of love. Fear of pain, fear of suffering, fear of the very vulnerability that connection requires. Every major religion, she noted, teaches the same solution — love other people — but 'they don't talk that much about how truly nerve-wracking everybody is.'