"What was wrong with me? I had a decent life. I was healthy. I wasn't starving or maimed by a land mine or orphaned. Yet somehow, it wasn't enough. I had a hole in me, and everything I took for granted slipped through it like sand.I felt like I had swallowed yeast, like whatever evil was festering inside me had doubled in size."

Pain, Emptiness, Struggle, Life

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"What was wrong with me? I had a decent life. I was healthy. I wasn't starving or maimed by a land mine or orphaned. Yet somehow, it wasn't enough. I had a hole in me, and everything I took for granted slipped through it like sand.I felt like I had swallowed yeast, like whatever evil was festering inside me had doubled in size."

Exlpore more Pain quotes

"Maybe you receive pain selfishly - thinking only of yourself. The cycle of pain wounds every participant, both victim and aggressor."

Bryant McGill, American Poet

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"Sometimes the pain is a startling breach that hobbles your entire soul, dreadful losses that rupture your perceived reality. Pain so visceral and unrelenting that even death itself can begin to look like a welcomed and kind benefactor."

Bryant McGill, American Poet

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"We conform to pain until we don't notice it anymore, it's what you call - numb - and it tragically blots out our pleasure too."

Bryant McGill, American Poet

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"I must never equate the degree of pain as evidencing the incorrectness of a decision, for if I do I will default on some of the most critical decisions I should have ever made."

Craig D. Lounsbrough, American Author

Pain, Truth, Decision, Wisdom

"One fire burns out another's burning,One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish."

William Shakespeare, English Dramatist

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"You are never more alive than when you are enraptured by pain."

Bryant McGill, American Poet

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"Yesterday he had limped, but today there was no part of his feet that didn't hurt, so limping did no good."

Patrick Rothfuss, Australian Athlete

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"There's wall of agony between dreams and reality."

Toba Beta, Indonesian Author

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"Don't lick your wounds unless you care to taste the sting a second time."

Richelle E. Goodrich, American Poet

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"We are never taught more deeply and more truthfully than by pain."

Bryant McGill, American Poet

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Explore more quotes by Jodi Picoult

"[I] don't think I was trying to kill myself. I just wanted to hurt, and understand exactly whay I was hurting. This made sense: you cut, you felt pain, period."

Healing

"Forgiving isn't something you do for someone else. It's something you do for yourself. It's saying, 'You're not important enough to have a stranglehold on me.' It's saying, 'You don't get to trap me in the past. I am worthy of a future."

Healing

"Grief is a curious thing, when it happens unexpectedly. It is a Band-Aidbeing ripped away, taking the top layer off a family. And the underbellyof a household is never pretty, ours no exception. There were times Istayed in my room for days on end with headphones on, if only so that Iwould not have to listen to my mother cry. There were the weeks that myfather worked round-the-clock shifts, so that he wouldn't have to comehome to a house that felt too big for us."

Healing

"There's a problem with wounded birds, Cassie," Connor said. "Either they fly away from you one day, or else they never get better. They stay hurt no matter what you do."

Healing

"By now you've already formed your own impression. you believe that an act committed a lifetime ago defines a man, or you believe that a person's past has nothing to do with his future. you think i am either a hero, or a monster. maybe knowning more about circumstances will make you think differently about me, but it won't change what happened twenty-eight years ago."

Judgment

"Seeing her sitting there unresponsive makes me realize that silence has a sound."

Awareness

"I don't understand why it's a sin if you love something and want to keep it from having to suffer."

Morality

"In the past, even Alex's promises hadn't prevented a reoccurence. She didn't have a choice. She wished he could see that as clearly as she did."

Trust

"When a freedom is taken away from you, I suppose, you recognize it as a privilege, not a right."

Freedom

"If you travel in space for three years and come back, four hundred years will have passed on Earth. I am only an armchair astronomer, but I have the odd sense that I have returned from a journey to a world where nothing quite makes sense."

Exploration