Numbness Quotes - Page 4

• Very depressed today. Unable to write a thing. Menacing gods. I feel outcast on a cold star, unable to feel anything but an awful helpless numbness.

  Sylvia Plath

  Depression, Stars, Writing

  Sylvia Plath (2000). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962”, Anchor

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• Torture presupposes, it requires, it craves the abrogation of our capacity to imagine others suffering, dehumanizing them so much that their pain is not our pain. It demands this of the torturer, placing the victim outside and beyond any form of compassion or empathy, but also demands of everyone else the same distancing, the same numbness.

  Ariel Dorfman

  Pain, Compassion, Empathy

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• I am gay on the outside, especially among my own folk (I count Poles my own); but inside something gnaws at me; some presentiment, anxiety, dreams - or sleeplessness - melancholy, indifference - desire for life, and the next instant, desire for death; some kind of sweet peace, some kind of numbness, absent-mindedness.

  Frederic Chopin

  Life, Dream, Sweet

  Frederic Chopin (2013). “Chopin's Letters”, p.166, Courier Corporation

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• When we look squarely at injustice and get involved, we actually feel less pain, not more, because we overcome the gnawing guilt and despair that festers under our numbness. We clean the wound - our own and others' - and it can finally heal.

  Desmond Tutu

  Pain, Guilt, Despair

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• When I fell out of the light, I entered The stomach of indifference, the wordless cupboard.

  Sylvia Plath

  Light, Emptiness, Indifference

  Sylvia Plath (2010). “The Colossus”, p.72, Faber & Faber

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• I think there's a certain numbness in modern society, that accepts certain kinds of violence, but represses other kinds of violence.

  Nick Cave

  Thinking, Violence, Kind

  "Blissed Out: The Raptures of Rock". Book by Simon Reynolds, 1988.

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• ... when he kissed her, she received the kiss without returning it, her eyes wide open, not afraid, not a virgin's eyes, just flat and uninvolved.

  Tim O'Brien

  Eye, Kissing, Emptiness

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.11, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Apathy is a spiritual numbness that creeps in and corrupts the good that God intends for our life and the good that He wants us to accomplish for Him and His kingdom.

  Elizabeth George

  Spiritual, Apathy, Want

  Elizabeth George (2014). “A Woman's Walk with God: Growing in the Fruit of the Spirit”, p.143, Harvest House Publishers

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• People talk about the pain of grief, but I don't know what they mean. To me, grief is a devastating numbness, every sensation dulled.

  Veronica Roth

  Pain, Grief, Mean

  "Allegiant". Book by Veronica Roth, 2013.

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• Personal voice- prophesy- disrupts the state of communal numbness in which most of us exist.

  Walter Brueggemann

  Voice, States

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• I have carpal tunnel so I can't write more than four hours total without tingling numbness. I take a lot of breaks and do stretches.

  Eden Robinson

  Writing, Tunnels, Four

  "The Saturday Rumpus Interview With Eden Robinson". Interview With Helga Schimkat, therumpus.net. September 24, 2016.

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• It's important to cultivate detachment. One way to do this is to practice imagining yourself dead, or in the process of dying. If there's a window, you must imagine your body falling out the window. If there's a knife, you must imagine the knife piercing your skin. If there's a train coming, you must imagine your torso flattened under its wheels. These exercises are necessary to achieving the proper distance.

  Susanna Kaysen

  Distance, Fall, Knives

  "Girl, Interrupted". Book by Susanna Kaysen, 1994.

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• I felt a kind of numbness, an enervation, but more particularly an odd fragility - as if my body had actually become frail, hypersensitive and somehow disjointed and clumsy, lacking normal coordination. And soon I was in the throes of a pervasive hypochondria.

  William Styron

  Body, Normal, Fragility

  William Styron (1990). “Darkness visible: a memoir of madness”, Random House Incorporated

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• So you couldn't protect yourself? The absolute erodes; the boundary, the wall around the self erodes. If I was waiting I had been invaded by time. But do you think you're free? I think I recognize the patterns of my nature. Bud do you think you're free? I had nothing and I was still changed. Like a costume, my numbness was taken away. Then hunger was added.

  Louise Glück

  Wall, Taken, Thinking

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• I had nothing and I was still changed.  Like a costume, my numbness was taken away.  Then hunger was added.

  Louise Glück

  Taken, Costumes, Hunger

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• Every parent who has ever said a few words over a goldfish in a toilet bowl
  or felt the numbness of an unexpected diagnosis in a pediatrician's office will appreciate the heartfelt wisdom in It's Okay to Cry. Norm Wright tenderly and skillfully equips parents to help children cultivate a healthy response to life's many pains and sorrows.

  Lori Borgman

  Children, Pain, Heart

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• Great potential for personal empowerment can be found in attending to our awareness of global problems and to our understanding of how they connect with each other and with our personal lives. The process of naming the danger, saying aloud that the threats to life on earth are real, moves us from the numbness of denial to the aliveness that makes action possible.

  Sarah Connor

  Real, Moving, Understanding

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• The primary dues a writer or any artist pays is to remain sentient, and to forfeit the illusionary luxury of such anesthetics as avoidance, numbness, and denials.

  Vanna Bonta

  Artist, Luxury, Denial

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• I want someone to pinch me so I can feel something, anything. I'm sick of this numbness, of feeling so alone and outside of everything, but I know it's too dangerous to wake up." —Ruth Mendenberg

  Carol Matas

  Sick, Feelings, Ruth

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• And in some way, Clary thought, he meant it, meant his gratitude. He had long ago lost the ability to distinguish between force and cooperation, between fear and willingness, between love and torture. And with that realization came a rush of numbness—what was the point of hating Valentine for being a monster when he didn’t even know he was one?

  Cassandra Clare

  Gratitude, Hate, Valentine

  Cassandra Clare (2011). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instrument Series (4 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels”, p.1233, Simon and Schuster

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• She still felt shell-shocked by all of it, numb. Beneath the numbness, though, was a raw and terrible anger that was unlike anything she'd felt before. She had so little experience with genuine anger that it scared her. She actually worried that if she started screaming, she'd never stop.

  Kristin Hannah

  Shells, Littles, Scared

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• I felt deeply tricked. Stunned. And furious. I also felt my default emotion: numbness.

  Augusten Burroughs

  Emotion, Default, Furious

  Augusten Burroughs (2010). “Running with Scissors: A Memoir”, p.312, Macmillan

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• Just that, is one of those uncommon moments, those times when you don't wish for something else, for even one thing to be different; when you have no other needs or worries, where your insides are calm, and everything you were ever restless about, anything that had ever given you angst, is quieted to stillness. No steel ball in your chest, no breathless fear. No blue numbness of nearly passing out, no nagging doubts of the backstage mind. All of that, forgotten. It is just rightness, so rare.

  Deb Caletti

  Blue, Worry, Doubt

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• Kill her for me," she said in that whiny little-girl voice. Diego took a step toward me, wearing an expression that told me he was only too happy to oblige his lady love. "Oh, what?" I said. I wasn't even scared. I didn't care anymore. The numbness in my heart had pretty much taken over my whole body. "You always do what she tells you? You know, we have a word for that now. It's called being whipped.

  Meg Cabot

  Girl, Taken, Heart

  Meg Cabot (2009). “The Mediator #4: Darkest Hour”, p.169, Zondervan

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• The airy sky has taken its place leaning against the wall. It is like a prayer to what is empty And what is empty turns its face to us and whispers: 'I am not empty, I am open'.

  Tomas Transtromer

  Prayer, Wall, Taken

  Tomas Transtromer (2017). “The Half-Finished Heaven: Selected Poems”, p.126, Graywolf Press

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