Quotes About Pain

I wanted to know what happened when two people felt it. Would it divide the hurt in two, make it lighter to bear, the way feeling someone's joy seemed to double it?

There's no pain on earth that doesn't crave a benevolent witness.

Loss takes up inside of everything sooner or later and eats right through it.

The sorry truth is you can walk your feet to blisters, walk till kingdom-com, and you never will outpace your grief.

In writing The Invention of Wings, I was inspired by the words of Professor Julius Lester, which I kept propped on my desk: "History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another's pain in the heart our own.

Journal became a sanctuary where I could pour out in honesty my pain and joy. It recorded my footsteps and helped me understand where I was standing, where I had been, and even where God pointed.

Sarah was up in her room with her heart broke so bad, Binah said you could hear it jangle when she walked.

Did this mean if I told May about T. Ray's mounds of grits, his dozens of small cruelties, about my killing my mother--that hearing it, she would feel everything I did? I wanted to know what happened when two people felt it. Would it divide the hurt in two, make it lighter to bear, the way feeling someone's joy seemed to double it?

There's no pain on earth that doesn't crave a benevolent witness.

The sorry truth is you can walk your feet to blisters, walk till kingdom-come, and you never will outpace your grief.

I feared my grief would turn to despair, that it would become a skin I couldn't shed.

Sometimes things of magnitude settle over you with excruciating slowness. Say you break your ankle and don't feel it hurting till you've walked another block.

She didn't say, Come on now, stop your crying, everything's going to be okay, which is the automatic thing people say when they want you to shut up. She said, 'It hurts, I know it does. Let it out. Just let it out.' So I did. With my mouth pressed against her dress, it seemed like I drew up my whole lifeload of pain and hurled it into her breast, heaved it with the force of my mouth, and she didn't flinch.

I didn't see why loving someone had to have so much agony attached to it. It felt like a series of fresh cuts in the skin of my heart

Our choice, as Florence Nightingale put it, is between pain and paralysis. A hard one. But it's only when we are willing to see the truth about our lives as women, however painful that truth might be, that we enter the portal of the journey.

I think every pain in this world wants to be witnessed

The sting shot pain all the way to my elbow, causing me to marvel at how much punishment a minuscule creature can inflict. I'm prideful enough to say I didn't complain. After you get stung, you can't get unstung no matter how much you whine about it. I just dived back into the riptide of saving bees.

Mauma came down with a limp. When she was in her room or in the kitchen house for meals, she didn't have any trouble, but the minute she stepped in the yard, she dragged her leg like it was a dead log.

In an interview, novelist Alice Walker says, You think you can avoid [pain], but actually you can't. If you do, you just get sicker, or you feel more pain. But if you can speak it, if you can write it, if you can paint it, it is very healing

Professor Julius Lester, which I kept propped on my desk: "History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another's pain in the heart our own.

In a weird way I must have loved my little collection of hurts and wounds. They provided me with some real nice sympathy, with the feeling I was exceptional.

People give pain, are callous and insensitive, empty and cruel…but place heals the hurt, soothes the outrage, fills the terrible vacuum that these human beings make.

I stared at the statue, feeling the fractured place in my heart.

He said she left me, that she left both of us and ran away." A wall of glass broke in my chest, a wall I didn't even know was there.