The pain is unrelenting; one does not abandon, even briefly, one's bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes.
I remind myself that my pain is not unique. Everybody suffers.
To sigh, yet feel no pain; To weep, yet scarce know why; To sport an hour with Beauty's chain, Then throw it idly by.
Weave me a rope from this dark despair, from this dull-eyed pain. . . Weave me a rope from this endless night, from this distant shore. . . Weave me a rope that will pull me through these impossible times.
There was no doubt now in Ender's mind. There was no help for him. Whatever he faced, now and forever, no one would save him from it. Peter might be scum, but Peter had been right, always right; the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can, and nothing and no one will ever save you.
I feel like there's no need to put on a heel that's too high. There's nothing cute about wobbling. There's nothing cute about not wanting to dance or walk somewhere because you're in pain.
Be surprised by joy, be surprised by the little flower that shows its beauty in the midst of a barren desert, and be surprised by the immense healing power that keeps bursting forth like springs of fresh water from the depth of our pain.
All you who are in love Aye and can not remove it I pity the pain that you endure. For experience lets me know That your hearts are filled with woe It's a woe that no mortal can cure. -"the Curragh of Kildare
Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fibre, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things. There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation. The thin beaten-out leaf of tremulous gold that chronicles the direction of forces the eye cannot see is in comparison coarse. It is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of love touches it, and even then must bleed again, though not in pain.
Closeness can lead to emotions other than love. It's the ones who have been too intimate with you, lived in too close quarters, seen too much of your pain or envy or, perhaps more than anything, your shame, who, at the crucial moment, can be too easy to cut out, to exile, to expel, to kill off.
Remember, government is not an enlightened organization designed to promote public welfare. It is barbaric, uncivilized forcemilitary and police power put to the service of the insiders who control it. Yes, there are constraints on the way the insiders use their power. There are 'checks and balances,' built into the constitution, for example. And there are cultural norms and traditional prohibitions. But eventually, the norms and traditions wear off, like painkillers. And then, the pain of raw government begins again.
Faith draws the poison from every grief, takes the sting from every loss, and quenches the fire of every pain, and only faith can do it.
In India the government is very chaotic and poorly run. They are forced into action by public pressure. When it's a larger event, there's a lot more pressure - to do something, to investigate, to give some kind of compensation to the victims. With the smaller attacks, the pain is concentrated on those affected, because they've not just been forgotten by everyone else, which is normal, they've also been forgotten by the government, which lets the cases drag on for years in the courts.
In terms of effect on the world, it's very good that I've lived. And so I guess, if I could go back in time and prevent my birth, I wouldn't do it. But I sure wish I hadn't had so much pain.
Many years before when I had serious back pain from a sports injury, the surgeons said they would explore my spine and "figure it out. " Out of frustration I had impulsively opted for the procedure. They ended up fusing the vertebrae. It left me debilitated. In hindsight, I blamed myself more than the surgeons. I had pressed them for a solution when in fact none was apparent because the cause of the pain was obscure.
Sometimes writing a novel is not unlike having a baby. You'd have to ask a female novelist to compare the pain.
Listen carefully. I'd crush you like a bug for causing my wife one single moment of pain. Believe it. Fear it.
[Scientific testing] can't determine how the mind will tolerate pain in a race. Sometimes, I say, 'Today I can die. '
No one knows how greatness comes to a man. It may lie in his blackness, sleeping, or it may lance into him like those driven fiery particles from outer space. These things, however, are known about greatness: need gives it life and puts it in action; it never comes without pain; it leaves a man changed, chastened, and exalted at the same time--he can never return to simplicity.
As a society, you were unwilling to reflect upon the shared pain that united you with those who attacked you. You retreated into myths of your own difference, assumptions of your own superiority. And you acted out these beliefs on the stage of the world, so that the entire planet was rocked by the repercussions of your tantrums, not least my family, now facing war thousands of miles away.
