Self Injury Quotes - Page 2

• A scar nobly got is a good livery of honor.

  William Shakespeare

  Honor, Scar, Injury

  William Shakespeare, Capel Lofft (1812). “Aphorisms from Shakespeare; arranged according to the plays,&c. With a preface and notes, etc. [By C. Lofft.]”, p.94

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• Mutilation is the badge that can never be taken off, and sets us apart from all others. Pain is important to the bonding-a physical horror that bonds us ever tighter to all those who have partaken. The intensity of the experience helps to widen the gulf between us and those who have not shared.

  Clive Barker

  Pain, Taken, Important

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• There's a certain window of time in the middle of the night out in Middle America where there's no bar open and nothing on TV. If you don't want to do too many drugs, you have to start bodily mutilation.

  Ani DiFranco

  Night, America, Drug

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• The fellowship of those who bear the mark of pain: who are the members of this Fellowship? Those who have learnt by experience what physical pain and bodily anguish mean, belong together all the world over; they are united by a secret bond.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Pain, Mean, Secret

  Albert Schweitzer, Albert Schweitzer Institute for the Humanities (1998). “The Primeval Forest”, p.128, JHU Press

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• And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand, The hand that held the steel: For only blood can wipe out blood, And only tears can heal

  Oscar Wilde

  Healing, Blood, Hands

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde”, p.24, Oscar Wilde

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• Shedding off one more layer of skin, Keeping one step ahead of the persecutor within.

  Bob Dylan

  Evil, Skins, Steps

  Song: Jokerman, Album: Infidels, 1983

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• Cutting pain was a different flavor of hurt. It made it easier not to think about having my body and my family and my life stolen, made it easier not to care... -Wintergirls

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Hurt, Pain, Cutting

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• Cold glass, how you insert yourself Between myself and myself. I scratch like a cat. The blood that runs is dark fruit- An effect, a cosmetic. You smile. No, it is not fatal.

  Sylvia Plath

  Running, Cat, Dark

  Sylvia Plath (2010). “Ariel: The Restored Edition”, p.49, Faber & Faber

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• Two days later, two days before Christmas, I am judged fat and sane enough to be kicked out of the hospital. The plan to send me straight back to New Seasons won't work. There is no room at the inn for a leather Lia-skin plumped full of messy things. Not yet. The director promises Dr. Marrigan he'll have a bed for me next week. I'm stable enough to go home until then. They all say I'm stable.

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Home, Next Week, Two

  Laurie Halse Anderson (2014). “Wintergirls”, p.191, Scholastic UK

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• I'll take a rusty nail and scratch your initials on my arm.

  Tom Waits

  Arms, Nails, Scratches

  Song: Kentucky Avenue, Album: Blue Valentine

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• My thoughts are messy, my emotions are messy, my body goes in and out at will. The raised white scars on my arms and legs are the only aspect of my being that comes close to minimalism. They came from chaos, but it is hard to carve frustration and unease into the flesh. Only straight lines.

  Emma Forrest

  Frustration, White, Body

  Emma Forrest (2007). “Thin Skin”, p.52, Simon and Schuster

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• I didn’t get her cutting at all. She’d done it sporadically, ever since the accident and it scared me each time. She'd try to explain it to me, how she didn't want to die—she just needed to get it out somehow. She felt so much emotionally, she would say, that a physical outlet—physical pain—was the only way to make the internal pain go away. It was the only way she could control it.

  Richelle Mead

  Pain, Cutting, Going Away

  Richelle Mead (2013). “Vampire Academy: The Complete Collection”, p.90, Penguin

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• Used to be that my whole body was my canvas-hot cuts licking my ribs, ladder rungs climbing my arms, thick milkweed stalks shooting up my thighs.

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Cutting, Climbing, Ribs

  Laurie Halse Anderson (2009). “Wintergirls”, p.52, Penguin

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• I showed her how I'd been making tiny cuts in my skin to let the badness and the pain leak out. They were shallow at first, and short, like claw marks made by a desperate cat that wanted to hid under the front porch. Cutting pain was a different flavor of hurt. It made it easier not to think about having my body and my family and my life stolen, made it easier not to care.

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Hurt, Pain, Cat

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• The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain.

  Lord Byron

  Love, Inspirational, Life

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• The body says what words cannot.

  Martha Graham

  Dance, Photography, Get Well

  "Martha Graham Reflects on Her Art and a Life in Dance". archive.nytimes.com. March 31, 1985.

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• The body can't distinguish between cleansing and punishing for the body is ignorant, and mute besides.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Ignorant, Body, Cleansing

  Joyce Carol Oates (2000). “Snapshots: 20th century mother-daughter fiction”, David R. Godine Publisher

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• And I am still alive-what though, my damnation is eternal. A man who deliberately mutilates himself is truly damned, is he not? I believe that I am in hell, therefore I am.

  Arthur Rimbaud

  Believe, Men, Damnation

  Arthur Rimbaud (1994). “A Season in Hell and Other Poems”, Anvil PressPoetry Limited

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• I felt white, drained of blood, cared for, purified. Peaceful.

  Margaret Atwood

  Blood, White, Peaceful

  Margaret Atwood (2011). “Cat's Eye”, p.465, Anchor

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• My death from the wrists, two name tags, blood worn like a corsage to bloom one on the left and one on the right.

  Anne Sexton

  Blood, Names, Two

  Anne Sexton, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Diana Hume George (2000). “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton”, p.97, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.

  Leonard Cohen

  Wounds And Scars, Flesh, Made

  Leonard Cohen (2011). “The Favourite Game”, p.10, Emblem Editions

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• I hurt myself today to see if I could feel. I hurt myself, you said to try to make him feel. So I hurt myself again to see if he'd see me. I hurt myself again and no, he never could see me.

  Tori Amos

  Hurt, Trying, Today

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• Alone, she took hot baths and sat exhausted in the steaming water, wondering at her perpetual exhaustion. All that winter she noticed the limp, languid weight of her arms, her veins bulging slightly with the pressure of her extreme weariness ... one day in January she drew a razor blade lightly across the inside of her arm, near the elbow, to see what would happen.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Winter, Water, One Day

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• One really ought to be afraid of self-torture. But it tempted me. It begged. The dark place that my mind was fast becoming blends, in my memory, with the dark womb of church: the chant, the fugue of prayer, the strange erotic energy that carving a very small cross into my thigh with a nail had brought.

  Marya Hornbacher

  Prayer, Memories, Dark

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• Help, I have done it again I have been here many times before Hurt myself again today And the worst part is There's no-one else to blame.

  Sia Furler

  Suicide, Hurt, Self Harm

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