Quotes on It Hurts

So much of what I love about poetry lies in the vast possibilities of voice, the spectacular range of idiosyncratic flavors that can be embedded in a particular human voice reporting from the field. One beautiful axis of voice is the one that runs between vulnerability and detachment, between 'It hurts to be alive' and 'I can see a million miles from here.' A good poetic voice can do both at once.

So often we try to make other people feel better by minimizing their pain, by telling them that it will get better (which it will) or that there are worse things in the world (which there are). But that's not what I actually needed. What I actually needed was for someone to tell me that it hurt because it mattered. I have found this very useful to think about over the years, and I find that it is a lot easier and more bearable to be sad when you aren't constantly berating yourself for being sad.

The bad thing about falling into pieces is that it hurts. The good thing about it is that once you're lying there in shards you've got nothing left to protect, and so have no reason not to be honest

Life with most teenagers was like having a low-grade bladder infection. It hurts, but you had to tough it out.

Nathaniel closes his eyes and jumps, his arms glued to his sides like that fly's. He doesn't try to break his fall, just hits hard, because it hurts less than everything else.

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.

At some point, you just pull off the Band-Aid, and it hurts, but then it's over and you're relieved.

I must be willing to give whatever it takes to do good to others. This requires that I be willing to give until it hurts. Otherwise, there is no true love in me, and I bring injustice, not peace, to those around me.

It hurts not the tongue to give fair words.

Every time you take a step, even when you don't want to. . . . When it hurts, when it means you rub chins with death, or even if it means dying, that's good. Anything that moves ahead, wins. No chess game was ever won by the player who sat for a lifetime thinking over his next move.

It hurts to love. It's like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.

It hurt, and that is not a euphemism. It hurt like a beating.

It hurt, of course, but more often than not the best things do, I've found.

I am a lover of what is, not because I'm a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality.

This was the trouble with families. Like invidious doctors, they knew just where it hurt.

Real isn't how you are made. It's a thing that happens to you. Sometimes it hurts, but when you are Real you don't mind being hurt. It doesn't happen all at once. You become. Once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand. Once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.

If you want to test cosmetics, why do it on some poor animal who hasn't done anything? They should use prisoners who have been convicted of murder or rape instead. So, rather than seeing if perfume irritates a bunny rabbit's eyes, they should throw it in Charles Manson's eyes and ask him if it hurts.

There is so much love in us all, but often we are too shy to express our love, and keep it bottled up inside us. We must learn to love, to love until it hurts, and we will know how to accept love.

Women's Lib? Oh, I'm afraid it doesn't interest me one bit. I've been so liberated it hurts.

I died upon that mountain. There is no question. A part of me will forever be upon that mountain. Dead. That's my brothers died. If there's a part of me that live, because of my brothers. Because of them I am still alive, and I can never forget, that no matter how much it hurts, how dark it gets, or how far you fall. You are never out of the fight.

You say you felt a presence, but I only sensed an absence. A vague pain without a source. I was like a patient who cannot tell the doctor where it hurts, only that it does.