Quotes About Suffering

He'd wanted to track down and personally injure anyone who had ever done harm to her or made her unhappy. He'd tortured himself with painful knowledge: every white-hot factoid he could collect he'd shove up under his fingernails. The more it hurt, the more--he was convinced--he loved her.

This form of love is like the pain of childbirth: so intense it's hard to remember afterwards

Messy love is better than none, I guess. I'm no authority on sane living. Which is all true and no hep at all, because this form of love is like the pain of childbirth: so intense it's hard to remember afterwards, or what kind of screams and grimaces it pushed you into.

Think of yourselves as pearls. We, sitting in our rows, eyes down, we make her salivate morally. We are hers to define, we must suffer her adjectives. I think about pearls. Pearls are congealed oyster spit.

But some people can't tell where it hurts. They can't calm down. They can't ever stop howling.

Why should the other ones in this play get a second chance at life, but not him? Why's he have to suffer so much for being what he is? It's like he's, you know, black or Native or something. Five strikes against him from Day One. He never asked to get born.

for it is the fate of a woman Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless, Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence. Hence is the inner life of so many suffering women Sunless and silent and deep, like subterranean rivers Running through caverns of darkness.… —HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, "The Courtship of Miles Standish," 1858.

Have they forgotten that I'm in here? They'll have to bring more food, or at least more water, or else I will starve, I will shrivel, my skin will dry out, all yellow like old linen; I will turn into a skeleton, I will be found months, years, centuries from now on, and they will say Who is this, she must have slipped our mind, Well sweep all those bones and rubbish into the corner, but save the buttons, no sense in having them go to waste, there's no help for it now.

Pero quién puede recordar el dolor, una vez que éste ha desaparecido? Todo lo que queda de él es una sombra, ni siquiera en la mente ni en la carne. El dolor deja una marca demasiado profunda como para que se vea, una marca que queda fuera del alcance de la vista y de la mente.

from under the ground, from under the waters, they clutch at us, they clutch at us, we won't let go.

The moment of betrayal is the worst, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you've been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil.

Mouth to mouth I'm bringing you back to life. Why did you drown like that without telling? What numbed you? What rose over your head was gradual and only everybody's air, standard & killing. Your head floats on your hand, on water, you turn over, your heart returns unsteadily to its two strong notes. I'm bringing you back to life, it's mutual.

But all my love ever came to was a bad end. Red-hot shoes, barrels studded with nails. That's what it feels like, unrequited love.

The worst of it was that those people out there-the fear, the suffering the wholesale death-did not really touch him. Crake used to say that Homo sapiens sapiens was not hard-wired to individuate other people in numbers above two hundred, the size of a primal tribe, and Jimmy would reduce that number to two.

The more it hurt, the more – he was convinced – he loved her.

It's possible to go so far in, so far down and back, they could never get you out.

But who can remember pain, once its over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see.

You attempt merely power you accomplish merely suffering

It's her second baby, she had another child, once, I know that from the Center, when she used to cry about it at night, like the rest of us only more noisily. So she ought to be able to remember this, what it's like, what's coming. But who can remember pain, once it's over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.

This was the story of the Concubine Cut into Twelve Pieces.

will be less dignified, more painful, death will be sooner, (it is no longer possible to be both human and alive) : lying piled with the others, your face and body covered so thickly with scars only the eyes show through.

Is that all there is? they must be thinking. Shouldn't it be less ordinary, more sordid, more epic, more truly harrowing, this flesh wound of your? Tell us more! Couldn't we please crank up the pain?

The line of her cheek has a marble, a classic, a simplicity; to look at her is to believe that suffering does indeed purify.

I need to feel physical pain, to attach myself to daily life.