Painfully Quotes (page 27)
I know what the value [of storytelling] is to me -- varied and huge, giving me everything from delight, to knowledge, to access to friends and colleagues, a desirable identity through valued work, escape from pain, and a steady income. Not bad, for something so intangible as making and selling dream-by-number kits.
Lois McMaster Bujold
It rasped her, though, to have stirring about in her this brutal monster! to hear twigs cracking and feel hooves planted down in the depths of that leaf-encumbered forest, the soul; never to be content quite, or quite secure, for at any moment the brute would be stirring, this hatred, which, especially since her illness, had power to make her feel scraped, hurt in her spine; gave her physical pain, and made all pleasure in beauty, in friendship, in being well, in being loved and making her...
Virginia Woolf
<...> [Rainer Maria Rilke] speaks of absorbing Earth's phenomena with the full frenzy of human relish and insight as our destiny: "It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again... We are the bees of the invisible... [Our work is] the continual conversion of the beloved visible and tangible world into the invisible vibrations and agitation of our own nature.
Diane Ackerman
It wasn't courage that motivated this casual, impersonal manner of treating so much pain; it was a special brand of cowardice...forcing others to listen to the most horrendous experiences and yet denying them the moment of empathy: don't feel sorry for me....This is nothing, nothing really.
Azar Nafisi
I’ve always wanted to be liked. It grieved me that I was treated with indifference. Left an orphan by Fortune, I wanted—like all orphans—to be the object of someone’s affection. This need has always been a hunger that went unsatisfied, and so thoroughly have I adapted to this inevitable hunger that I sometimes wonder if I really feel the need to eat.
Whatever be the case, life pains me.
Fernando Pessoa
... I think my sister Daphne's obsession with having children has a lot to do with wanting to erase the pain my mother caused. On one level, Daphne's approach makes more sense. Yet the thought of a redo is not only unappealing, but terrifying. I don't want that kind of power over anyone. I don't want to be something that someone has to overcome. After all, I think everyone would agree that it's far worse to be a fucked-up mother than it is to have one.
Emily Giffin
As we live, our hearts turn colder. Cause pain is what we go through, as we become older. We get insulted by others, lose trust for those others. We get back stabbed by friends. It becomes harder for us to give others a hand. We get our heart broken by people we love, even that we give them all we have. Then we lose family over time. What else could rust the heart more over time? Blackgold.
Kanye West
I look at pictures of you because I am afraid that you would notice me staring in real life. I looked at your picture today for countless minutes. It is closer than I’ll ever get to you for real. I felt like I was looking at a captured animal at a safe distance. If you knew I was doing this, you would feel sickened and frightened. That’s why you’ll never know. Years will go by and you’ll never know. I will never say the things that I want to say to you. I know the damage it would do. I love...
Henry Rollins
What if she stepped on a needle and it went right into her foot and Roberta would not feel it and the needle would rise and rise and rise through the veins leading up to the heart and then the needle would STAB HER IN THE HEART and Roberta would DIE and it would be VERY PAINFUL this according to nurse mother a medical expert on Freaky Ways to Croak... The mother shouted that she knew several people who died from the Rising Stab of the Unfelt Needle or RSUN she has seen cases of it many times...
Lynda Barry