Phantom Pain Quotes

Every so often I was overwhelmed by a phantom pain that cut through me like a knife. I was certain that if I looked down I would find blood all over, like the knife I once held in my hands, but it was all in my mind. ~ Gail Tsukiyama

It was a universal truth among males that anytime you saw a guy get it in the nuts, you experienced a shot of phantom pain in your own croquet set. ~ J.R. Ward

With the passing of time, she would slowly tire of this exercise. She would find it increasingly exhausting to conjure up, to dust off, to resuscitate once again what was long dead. There would come a day, in fact, years later, when [she] would no longer bewail his loss. Or not as relentlessly; not nearly. There would come a day when the details of his face would begin to slip from memory's grip, when overhearing a mother on the street call after her child by [his] name would no longer cut her adrift. She would not miss him as she did now, when the ache of his absence was her unremitting companion
like the phantom pain of an amputee. ~ Khaled Hosseini

Parental love is a matchless thing; if it weren't for that, most of us wouldn't have a pot to piss in, affectionately speaking. But even at its most irreplacable, it's still pretty cheap. Any ape loves their children; spiders lie still while theirs crawl around inside them, happy to let them eat their guts.
The only reason anybody unrelated is ever nice to anyone else, meanwhile, is as a sort of pre-emptive emotional strike - to prevent themselves from being treated as badly, potentially, as they might have treated other people. Which makes love only the lie two brains on spines tell each other, the lie that says: "You exist, because I love you. You exist, because you can see yourself in my eyes."
So we blunder from hope to hope, hollowed and searching. All of us equally incomplete.
And after all these years, still the sting comes, the liquid pressure in the chest and nose, the migraine-forerunner frown. Phantom pain. The ghost without the murder.
But what the fuck? That's all it is, ever. You want to be loved. You tell other people you love them, in order to trick them into loving you back. And after a while, it's true. You feel the pull, the ache. ~ Gemma Files

My legs! Lord Jesus stop the pain in my legs!"

"Hush John," Florida said. "That's only phantom pain."

"Is it real?" I asked her.

She shrugged. "All pain is real. ~ Lucia Berlin

I want to reassure fans that I am 100% involved and will continue working on Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain; I'm determined to make it the greatest game I've directed to date. Don't miss it! ~ Hideo Kojima

You don't limp at all. Your recovery is going well."
"Yes." Though whether someone ever fully recovered from losing a limb, he didn't know. He sure as hell hadn't. It had been five years, and still there were days when the pain in his nonexistent leg was enough to drive him out of his mind. ~ Laura Oliva

Of course the edges of the wound struggle to close up
and the clock wants to be set going
(how awkward to be pointing permanently to half past one)
amputated limbs feel phantom pain ~ Katarina Mazetti

It's not easy losing someone," she said. "It never goes away, does it?" "The Phantom Pain, they call it," I said. "Like amputees get when they can still feel their missing limbs. ~ John Boyne

Love is the greatest magician in the universe; it can turn pain into pleasure, agony into power, sorrow into joy, and gloom into laughter. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

You put her body on display." His lips brush my ear as he forces the words through clenched teeth. Pain hums in his voice. "I'll do the same to you. ~ Victoria Aveyard

Grief is like any other kind of pain. No matter how intense or how constant it is, time takes the edge from it. It may not fade, but it loses its sharpness. It becomes the new normal, and eventually steps aside and makes room in the mind for other things. ~ Joseph R. Lallo

The dog was cold and in pain. But being only a dog it did not occur to him to trot off home to the comfort of the library fire and leave his master to fend for himself. ~ Albert Payson Terhune

These memories sustained him, but not so easily. Too often they reminded him of where he was when he last summoned them. They lay on the far side of a great divide in time, as significant as B.C. and A.D. Before prison, before the war, before the sight of a corpse became a banality. ~ Ian McEwan

Without You"

My Pillow gazes upon me at night
Empty as a gravestone;
I never thought it would be so bitter
To be alone,
Not to lie down asleep in your hair.

I lie alone in a silent house,
The hanging lamp darkened,
And gently stretch out my hands
To gather in yours,
And softly press my warm mouth
Toward you, and kiss myself, exhausted and weak-
Then suddenly I'm awake
And all around me the cold night grows still.
The star in the window shines clearly-
Where is your blond hair,
Where your sweet mouth?

Now I drink pain in every delight
And poison in every wine;
I never knew it would be so bitter
To be alone,
Alone, without you. ~ Hermann Hesse

It's difficult to admit to ourselves that we suffer. We feel humiliated, like we should have been able to control our pain. If someone else is suffering, we like to tuck them away, out of sight. It's a cruel, cruel conditioning. There is no controlling the unfolding of life. ~ Sharon Salzberg

I wish I could tell him that we're going through the same thing. I wish I could speak to him like I want to instead of like I'm supposed to. But the idea of admitting that I need help is too much to bear, so I turn away. ~ Veronica Roth

Losing something she loved had ripped her open in a way she had not expected. The pain hurt, but the pain was right. The Order had wrought a galaxy in which good capitulated to evil, where human feelings - Aryn's feelings - were crushed under the weight of Jedi nonattachment. ~ Paul S. Kemp

HAPPY EVER AFTER is a concept I'll never believe in. I would be content to sample some little taste of happiness today, tonight, right now. Though I know without a doubt that tomorrow will come saturated with pain. Life is like that. At least my life. And honestly, I cant think of anyone whose life is any different. The price tag for joy is misery. [ ... ] ~ Ellen Hopkins

We are all frail-embodied creatures, who at times suffer through injustice, abuse, illness, pain and misfortune. ~ Bryant McGill

If you love someone, you'd rather suffer the pain alone to spare them. ~ Betty Smith

Pity aims just as little at the pleasure of others as malice at the pain of others Per-Se. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Pain and illness, the deaths of those one loves, and discomforts and disappointments mar the happy norm, but they do not alter the fact that happiness is the norm, nor affect the tendency of the continuum to restore it, to heal it, after any disturbance. ~ Jean Liedloff

Those in pain have no time for the pain they cause. ~ Margaret Atwood

Neurosis is the natural by-product of pain avoidance. ~ C. G. Jung

From what has been said we can clearly understand the nature of Love and Hate. Love is nothing else but pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause: Hate is nothing else but pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause. We further see, that he who loves necessarily endeavors to have, and to keep present to him, the object of his love; while he who hates endeavors to remove and destroy the object of his hatred. ~ Baruch Spinoza

Man will never reach the higher wisdom,
If he can't yet accept the pain of change. ~ Toba Beta

Cruelty, whether physical or emotional, isn't normal. It may signal what psychologists call the dark triad of psychopathic, narcissistic and Machiavellian personality disorders. One out of about every 25 individuals has an antisocial personality disorder. Their prognosis for recovery is zero, their potential for hurting you about 100 percent. So don't assume that a vicious person just had a difficult childhood or a terrible day; most people with awful childhoods end up being empathetic, and most people, even on their worst days, don't seek satisfaction by inflicting pain. When you witness evil, if only the tawdry evil of a conversational stiletto twist, use your ninjutsu, wait for a distraction, then disappear. ~ Martha N. Beck

Looking at suicide - the sheer numbers, the pain leading up to it, and the suffering left behind - is harrowing. For every moment of exuberance in the science, or in the success of governments, there is a matching and terrible reality of the deaths themselves: the young deaths, the violent deaths, the unnecessary deaths ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

He had the face of a floating astronaut who had lost his tether and had only one chance to grab a lifeline or forever drift away into endless black. I knew that feeling, the sense of panic that stretched time, turning seconds into years, and the deep pain that came from being hurt by not one person but many, a gang of bullies that expanded into a neighborhood and then into a community, until you questioned the whole world. ~ Lissa Price

I don't feel pain cause it's all in the mind,
And what's mines is mines and yours is mine! ~ Kirk Jones

For all the pain I saw at Paterson, it is nothing compared to the pain that people inflict upon each other in the real world. All I can think of now is that it is not right for me to be unaware of that pain, including the pain that I inflict on others. Only how is it possible to live without being either numb to it or overwhelmed by it? ~ Francisco X Stork

He pointed to the burning building as sirens heralded the approach of emergency personnel. "This is your job - this is your life. Blood and death and pain and vengeance and justice. And sometimes it sucks, but it's worth it."

Caleb sighed, but not in resignation. "I know this is the job, and it is worth it. But I refuse to believe it's my life. Not only and not forever."

Samuel pinched the bridge of his nose and waved dismissively with his other hand. "F***ing romantic. ~ G.S. Jennsen

Sometimes pain is so unmanageable that the idea of spending another day with it seems impossible. Other times pain acts as a compass to help you get through the messier tunnels of growing up. But the pain can only help you find happiness if you can remember it. ~ Adam Silvera

Answer me one thing," she says in a rigidly controlled voice. "Do you love Logan?"
Perhaps I should lie, but in that moment, after what I've just witnessed, I'm incapable of expressing anything but the truth of what's in my heart. "With all my heart," I sob. ~ Siobhan Davis

Because everything worth having hurts. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

I dropped by your yesterday
where I found my tomorrow
There I met a living pain
and you: a dying sorrow

From the poem- My Tomorrow ~ Munia Khan

My innocence is not lost - it has been converted into wisdom. The sensation we call "breaking" is the pain that comes from resisting the truth. Life broke parts of me that needed to fall away for me to live an open and truthful life. ~ Jewel

Suspicion is most often useless pain. ~ Samuel Johnson

Not all pain can be consoled. Sometimes all a pining person really need is an ear to listen and a heart to understand them. ~ J. Yuvanesh

Any search for a "pain-free existence" is doomed to failure. ~ Russ Harris

There is, though, nothing that prepares us for the worst things in our life. There is nothing you can do to stop the shock, or buffer the pain. ~ James Frey