Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Barbara KingsolverRead
I stir in bed and the memories rise out of me like a buzz of flies from a carcass. I crave to be rid of them.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a struggle with haunting memories and a longing for release from them.
In this quote, Barbara Kingsolver reflects on the unpleasant memories that surface unbidden in the mind, comparing them to flies that swarm around a carcass. This vivid imagery evokes a sense of discomfort and desperation to escape from the burdens of the past, highlighting how memories can be intrusive and overwhelming, making one yearn for peace and freedom from these mental traps.
In practice
In a speech about coping with trauma, one might use this quote to illustrate the challenges of dealing with painful memories.
Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.
I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.
I did it to win love, and to prove myself capable. Not to move mountains. In my opinions, mountains don't move. They only look changed when you look down on them from great height.
Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own.
I've been everywhere in the world, seen everything, had everything a man can have.
She wasn't afraid of difficulties, what frightened her was having to choose one particular path. Choosing a path meant missing out on others. She had a whole life to live and she was always thinking that, in the future, she might regret the choices she made now.
I'm blessed to be living this dream of writing and singing, but that's not the real dream I had. The real dream was to make enough money to take care of all the pain and suffering that my mother has been through.
Rosemary felt that this swim would become the typical one of her life, the one that would always pop up in her memory at the mention of swimming.
I didn't want to be gay. I wanted to be... I wanted an easy life. And you know what? I am gay, and I still have an easy life.
When I wake up in the morning, I feel just like any other insecure 24-year-old girl.
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