Quotes About Pain

I'm sorry there is so much pain in this story. I'm sorry it's in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it. I've tried to put some of the good things in as well. Flowers, for instance, because where would we be without them?

The muscles of my face were beginning to hurt. Under some conditions, smiling is a workout.

She is about to add, I have scars, inside me, but she stops herself. What is a scar, Oh Toby? That would be the next question. Then she'd have to explain what a scar is. A scar is like writing on your body. It tells about something that once happened to you, such as a cut on your skin where blood came out.

A divorce is like an amputation, you survive but there's less of you.

But unshed tears can turn rancid. So can memory. So can biting your tongue. My bad nights were beginning. I couldn't sleep.

Me, it's the heart: that's the part lacking. I used to want one: a dainty cushion of red silk dangling from a blood ribbon, fit for sticking pins in. But I've changed my mind. Hearts hurt. — Margaret Atwood, from "The Tin Woodwoman Gets a Massage ," Dearly: New Poems (Ecco, 2020)

Although he doesn't know it yet, she isn't his real life. But he is hers. This is painful.

What pays for all this? Grief in the face of inevitable death. The wish to stop time. The human condition.

Because they were ready for us, and waiting. 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.

Though I knew how this failure would hurt you, I had to fold like a grey moth and let go. You could not believe I was more than your echo.

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.

There were signs and I missed them. For instance, Crake said once, Would you kill someone you loved to spare them pain? You mean, commit euthanasia? said Jimmy. Like putting down your pet turtle? Just tell me, said Crake. I don't know. What kind of love, what kind of pain?

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.

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

And there is so much time to be endured, time heavy as fried food or thick fog; and then all at once these red events, like explosions, on streets otherwise decorous and matronly and somnambulent. I'm sorry there is so much pain in this story. I'm sorry it's in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it. I've tried to put some of the good things in as well. Flowers, for instance, because where would we be without them?

Today I speak to my bones as I would speak to a dog. I want to go up the stairs, I tell them. Up, up, up, with one leg dragging. Is the ache deep in the bones, this elusive pain? Does that mean it will rain? Good bones, good bones, I coax, wondering how to reward them; if they will sit up for me, beg, roll over, do one more trick, once more. There. We're at the top. Good bones! Good bones ! Keep on going.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Each twinge, each murmur of slight pain, ripples of sloughed-off matter, swellings and diminishings of tissue, the droolings of the flesh, these are signs, these are the things I need to know about. Each month I watch for blood, fearfully, for when it comes it means failure. I have failed once again to fulfill the expectations of others, which have become my own.

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.

But in life, a tragedy is not one long scream. It includes everything that led up to it. Hour after trivial hours, day after day, year after year, and then the sudden moment: the knife stab, the shell-burst, the plummet of the car from the bridge.