Quotes about suffering

It is through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn.

As an old drill sergeant had told her, pain is the warrior’s friend. Pain reminds you that you aren’t dead yet.

Common suffering unites. But when suffering becomes intolerably acute, when it reduces people to abject, dehumanising poverty and insecurity, suffering disunites.

Even during the days and nights when she was dazed and only half awake the stories must have insinuated themselves into her torn and bruised body like draughts and ointments with healing powers beyond all explanation. (There is no pain and no badness,) she still hears the dry voice of old Taras in her ear, that a story cannot cure.

But there are words in my head, many things I want to say. I want to tell Ms. Tia I am sorry I made her come here. I want to ask why the doctor didn’t come too. Why didn’t he come and get a beating like his wife? If it takes two people to make a baby, why only one person, the woman, is suffering when the baby is not coming? Is it because she is the one with breast and the stomach for being pregnant? Or because of what? I want to ask, to scream, why are the women in Nigeria seem to be suffering for everything more than the men?

You were scared of the ball because it was big and hard and could hurt you, just like life can hurt you.

Time was unforgiving, it didn’t stop, not even to give people a chance to scrape themselves off the floor if they’d been shattered.

“Why is it that bad things have to happen so you learn there are lots of good people in the world?" (Ruthie)

Pain is pain. Speak up. Tell your story. (Author's Note)

“But wherever I go, I know I will feel most at home with the wounded of the world, who hold their heads up high no matter how broken they may seem.”

Everyone’s got their own battles to fight.

Graves scooched a little closer to me, and I didn't even think about it. I put my arms around him and hugged. I didn't care if it hurt my arm and my ribs and my neck and pretty much every other part of me, my heart most of all. When you're wrecked, that's the only thing to do, right? Hold onto whatever you can. Hold on hard.