Tortured Quotes

Vampires used to be the Dracula types, but in the last ten years most of them have become weak, brooding androgynes that only go after teenagers. A friend of mine took the opportunity to rid his whole city of them after the forth Mormon Vamps book hit and the sparkle meme was at its strongest."

"So does that make Ms. Mormon Sparkle Vamp a hero?"

"Of a sort. Before they started to sparkle, there were a lot of vamps who were tortured antiheroes, thanks to Rice and Whedon."

Ree grimaced. "Do you know if she was clued in?"

Eastwood shrugged. "She's very secretive, no one in the Underground has been able to say for sure. It's all rumor. My guess is she lost someone to a vampire and decided the greatest revenge she could inflict was to turn them into a laughing stock. ~ Michael R. Underwood

Phillip looked to Eloise. "Perhaps introductions are in order?"
"Oh," Eloise said, gulping. "Yes, of course. These are my brothers."
"I'd gathered," he said, his voice as dry as dust.
She shot him an apologetic look, which, Phillip thought, was really the least she could do after nearly
getting him tortured and
killed, then turned to her brothers and motioned to each in turn, saying, "Anthony, Benedict, Colin,
Gregory. These three," she added, motioning to A, B, and C, "are my elders. This one" - she waved
dismissively at Gregory - "is an infant. ~ Julia Quinn

Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seeds of rapacious licence and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind. ~ Charles Dickens

This, for Homer, is the tragedy of being human: to desire freedom, and be tortured by a sense of autonomy, and yet be imprisoned by forces beyond our control. ~ Kenan Malik

It was high time, for I now began to be tortured with thirst. The glow of the sun from above, its thousandfold reflection from the waves, the sea-water that fell and dried upon me, caking my very lips with salt, combined to make my throat burn and my brain ache. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Probably the last man who knew how it worked had been tortured to death years before. Or as soon as it was installed. Killing the creator was a traditional method of patent protection. ~ Terry Pratchett

Heretics have been hated from the beginning of recorded time; they have been ostracized, exiled, tortured, maimed, and butchered; but it has generally proved impossible to smother them; and when it has not, the society that has succeeded has always declined. ~ Learned Hand

But then the pastors and men of God can only be human,
cannot altogether be men of God; and so they have oppressed us, and burned us, and tortured us, and hence come to love palaces, and fine linen, and purple, and, alas, sometimes, mere luxury and idleness. ~ Anthony Trollope

White America is tortured by black America's failure to thrive, and all that guilt and anxiety has only gotten worse as a substantial quota of white America loses its own footing in the middle class and plunges into the rough country of joblessness, hopelessness, and government dependency. ~ James Howard Kunstler

All Gaza's temples are torn down and burned and the city is cleansed of every belief but the Christian faith. The most stubborn opponents, faute de mieux, are tied up, marched away to the provincial capital, severely tortured, and all killed mala morte, 'a great number.' ~ Ramsay MacMullen

Leaving home is living as though I do not yet have a home, and must look far and wide to find one. Home is the center of my being, where I can hear the voice that says, "You are my beloved. On you my favor rests," the same voice that gave life to the first Adam and spoke to Jesus, the second Adam. The same voice that speaks to all the children of God and sets them free to live in the midst of a dark world while remaining in the light. I have heard that voice. It has spoken to me in the past and continues to speak to me now. It is the never-interrupted voice of love speaking from eternity and giving life and love wherever it is heard. When I hear that voice, I know that I am home with God and have nothing to fear. As the beloved of my heavenly Father, "I can walk in the valley of darkness: no evil would I fear." As the beloved I can "cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils." Having "received without charge," I can "give without charge." As the Beloved, I can confront, console, admonish, and encourage without fear of rejection or need for affirmation. As the Beloved I can suffer persecution without desire for revenge and receive praise without using it as a proof of my goodness. As the Beloved I can be tortured and killed without ever having to doubt that the love that is given to me is stronger than death. As the Beloved I am free to live and give life, free also to die while giving life.
Jesus has made it clear to me that the same voice that h ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

I tortured people…" she said.
"When it was necessary," he agreed. "And you killed as well. If this had happened then, Keegan wouldn't still be alive. But you were never heated about it. You wouldn't let someone push your buttons. You didn't even have buttons that could be pushed. ~ Chani Lynn Feener

The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers. ~ Carl Jung

He was powerless because he had no precise desire, and this tortured him because he was vainly seeking something to desire. He could not even make himself stretch out his hand to switch on the light. The simple transition from intention to action seemed an unimaginable miracle. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Open the hood of a car and it will tell you something about the people who designed it, is just one of many phrases I'm tortured by. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Is that all we mortals are? The victims of tortured irony to amuse an insane murder of gods?

A murder of crows, a murder of gods-I like that, lass. ~ Steven Erikson

You take I-55 south, and you'll run into I-20. Or you could take ... "
I was about to be overloaded with information. "Oh that sounds just perfect. Let me do just that, or I'll lose track."
Sure, glad I could help."
Oh, you surely did."
We beamed at each other, just two nice women. I had to fight an impulse to say "I have a tortured vampire in my trunk," out of sheer giddiness. ~ Charlaine Harris

The hills
like poets put on
purple thought against
the
magnificent clamor of
day
tortured
in gold ~ E. E. Cummings

She loved him. There it was. The thing she'd vowed would never happen. She loved Theo Harp. Not just his body or his face. Not just for sex or companionship. Definitely not for his money. She loved him for who he was. For his beautiful, tortured, kind soul. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

When a spy is captured, he takes a suicide pill, believing it's better to die than be tortured. By that reasoning shouldn't those same pills be issued to anyone foolish enough to fall in love? - The Lighter Side of Death ~ Kyra Davis

Though they have been subjected to disgraceful treatment, the Palestinians in East Jerusalem are fortunate in comparison with those who are less visible, and therefore can be killed, tortured, humiliated, and driven from their destroyed homes and lands virtually at will. It is, in fact, astonishing that their spirit has not been broken. ~ Noam Chomsky

I've been thinking about disowning some of my genes lately. I have a few healthy, happy, long-living optimists in my family tree - most of them fans of Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy, a major champion of positive thinking. But I've got plenty of ancestors who played out more tortured hands. ~ Ariel Gore

You look like hell. (Sebastian)
Yeah, well, it's hard to look good when you're being tortured. (Damos) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

After four tortured years, more than 400 over life-sized figures, I felt as old and as weary as Jeremiah. I was only 37, yet friends did not recognize the old man I had become. ~ Michelangelo

In Europe it was once commonly believed that beasts could be possessed by demons and controlled by the evil of Satan. So animals, even birds and insects, were tried by ecclesiastical courts, just like witches and heretics. They were excommunicated, tortured and condemned to death. ~ Chet Williamson

During the 1980s, in California, a large number of Cambodian women went to their doctors with the same complaint: they could not see. The women were all war refugees. Before fleeing their homeland, they had witnessed the atrocities for which the Khmer Rouge, which had been in power from 1975 to 1979, was well known. Many of the women had been raped or tortured or otherwise brutalized. Most had seen family members murdered in front of them. One woman, who never again saw her husband and three children after soldiers came and took them away, said that she had lost her sight after having cried every day for four years. She was not the only one who appeared to have cried herself blind. Others suffered from blurred or partial vision, their eyes troubled by shadows and pains.

The doctors examined the women - about a hundred and fifty in all - found that their eyes were normal. Further tests showed that their brains were normal as well. If the women were telling the truth - and there were some who doubted this, who thought the women might be malingering because they wanted attention or were hoping to collect disability - the only explanation was psychosomatic blindness.

In other words, the women's minds, forced to take in so much horror and unable to take more, had managed to turn out the lights. ~ Sigrid Nunez

There is something in human history like retribution; and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself. The first blow dealt to the French monarchy proceeded from the nobility, not from the peasants. The Indian revolt does not commence with the ryots, tortured, dishonoured and stripped naked by the British, but with the sepoys, clad, fed and petted, fatted and pampered by them. ~ Karl Marx

Judgement is always based on experience and sometimes you will battle a person's history first, before commonsense will ever win the war. ~ Shannon L. Alder

The bed of a tortured soul is always in shambles by morning. ~ Elizabeth Mckenzie

I like you in my bed," Patch said. "I rarely pull down the covers. I rarely sleep. I could get used to this picture."
"Are you offering me a permanent place?"
"Already put a spare key in your pocket."
I patted my pocket. Sure enough, something small and hard was snug inside. "How charitable of you."
"I'm not feeling very charitable now," he said, holding my eyes, his voice deepening with a gravelly edge. "I missed you, Angel. Not one day went by that I didn't feel you missing from my life. You haunted me to the point that I began to believe Hank had gone back on his oath and killed you. I saw your ghost in everything. I couldn't escape you and I didn't want to. You tortured me, but it was better than losing you. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

Corruption and envy and lust for power. Cruelty and coldness. A vicious probing curiousity. Pure, poisonous, toxic malice. You have never from your earliest years shown a shred of compassion for sympathy or kindness without calculating how it would return to your advantage. You have tortured and killed without regret or hesitation; you have betrayed and intrigued and gloried in your treachery. You are a cess-pit of moral filth. ~ Philip Pullman

Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children. ~ Albert Camus

I told him that bed-and-breakfasts have ginormous whirlpool tubs, and that I'd be willing to do unspeakably sinful things to him
in it."
A strangled sound came from one of the two nerdy guys behind us in line, both wearing tortured expressions and staring at Erin. We stifled
laughs.
Maggie sighed. "Poor Chaz. He never had a chance… he's gonna be standing in front of a bunch of people saying 'I do' someday without
knowing how it happened."
"Ugh! I don't think so. When it's time to settle down, I'm getting somebody like…" Erin looked over her shoulder at the eavesdroppers behind
us, "like one of them."
The boys looked at each other and stood up a little straighter. With a smirk in Erin's direction, one of them fist-bumped the other. ~ Tammara Webber

Tens of thousands of God's saints and sufferers through the ages have found their dark nights lightened and tortured souls strengthened because they found help from the Spirit in the Word of God. ~ Billy Graham

I studied Hitchcock a little bit at University and knew the famous story about the Birds - that he'd tortured Tippi for a day using real birds. I had no idea that it was a five-day onslaught and that it was the tip of an iceberg that carried on through to another film. ~ Toby Jones

These stories have a dark side. Outsiders and eccentrics are regarded with suspicion, tortured, even killed. The major theme that emerges is of families diminished by conflict; almost a generation of adult males appears to be missing. Their absence is balanced by a number of strong female presences. This also reflects the dominance of women in the Acehnese household.

Azhari is a master of suspense. He wastes no words; his narration is sparse. The overall atmosphere of the stories in Nutmeg Woman is tense and anxious. If there is a message, it is a plea for peace and tolerance and an end to bloodshed and oppression. ~ Heather Curnow

The Bible lists in Hebrews 11 the heroes of the faith ... who were tortured, imprisoned, stoned, torn apart, and killed by the sword. They didn't wear designer jeans but went about in animal skins, destitute and tormented. ~ Billy Graham

If a man has tortured and killed your father, your mother, your sweetheart, in short, one of those beings who leave an eternal emptiness and a perpetually bleeding wound when they are torn from your heart, do you think society has given you sufficient reparation because the blade of the guillotine has passed between the murderer's trapezius and his occipital bone, because the who made you undergo long years of mental and emotional suffering has undergone a few seconds of physical pain? ~ Alexandre Dumas

You don't know what I mean. She is so strong, and you assume that strength has no end, no breaking point. You and Teleus are among the few she still trusts enough to love, and you say yes, she should have you tortured and killed. What were you thinking? ~ Megan Whalen Turner

For Blitz, meanwhile, an almost tragic dilemma had begun. As time passed, he and Giuseppe understood each other better and better, conversing and playing together on the floor with immense amusement, and so he found himself madly in love also with Giuseppe, as well as Nino. But Nino was always out, and Giuseppe always at home: thus it was impossible for him to live constantly in the company of both his loves, as he would have wished. And in consequence, with either one, he was always tortured by regret: and if he was with one, the mere mention of the others name or a smell that recalled him was enough for his homesickness to stream behind him, like a banner against the wind. At times, while he was on sentry duty outside Ninos school, suddenly, as if at a message brought him by a cloud, he would begin to sniff the sky with a mournful whimper, recalling the incarcerated Giuseppe. For a few minutes, a dissension would rend him, drawing him in two opposite directions at the same time; but finally, having overcome his hesitation, he would dash toward the San Lorenzo house, his long nose cleaving the wind like a prow. But at his destination, unfortunately, he found the door barred; and all his cries, mortified by the muzzle, passionately calling for Giuseppe, were in vain; for Giuseppe, though hearing him and suffering in his solitary room, longing to let him in, was unable to do so. Then, resigning himself to his destiny of waiting outside doors, Blitz would stretch out there on t ~ Elsa Morante

This that is tormented and very tired,
tortured with restraints like a madman,
this heart. ~ Rumi

And in those changes to the Scriptures of your faith you only prove that you didn't know what you were doing in the first place. Picking and choosing your faith promises the ultimate freedom to be who you want and do what you want, but eventually it will only prove to you that to live for yourself and to make your law based on your own happiness is to become the slave of your imperfect self and to be tortured and tormented by your own pride and failure. ~ Hayley DiMarco

This girl who equally drove me crazy and made me care about her more than I should. She was the only one who understood. The only one who could help make what I was more bearable, even if she occasionally tortured me in the process. ~ Stacey Kade

The green sea swept into the shallows and seethed there like slaking quicklime. It surged over the rocks, tossing up spangles of water like a juggler and catching them deftly again behind. It raced knee-deep through the clefts and crevices, twisted and tortured in a thousand ways, till it swept nuzzling and sucking into the holes at the base of the cliff. The whole reef was a shambles of foam, but it was bright in the sun, bright as a shattered mirror, exuberant and leaping with light. ~ Colin Thiele

Rousseau's tormented and tortured nature made him look with eyes of hatred upon people like Diderot, d'Alembert, Helvétius in Paris, who seemed to him fastidious, sophisticated and artificial, incapable of understanding all those dark emotions, all those deep and torturing feelings which ravaged the heart of a true natural man torn from his native soil. ~ Isiah Berlin

I don't know. On my last junket I was caught in the middle of a massacre. The one before that I was tortured and left for dead. Joy and recreation seem to have escaped me somehow. ~ Colin Cotterill

We must guard against being too individualistic.... Christ is born to bring hope and joy also to whole communities of people--the exiles, the deported, the tortured, the silenced. ~ William Sloane Coffin

yet still I crave the sight of my own hypnotic gaze reflecting out at me from the shared mirror of anorexia and bulimia, number to life and reality, existing only in my self-made tortured state ~ Carol Lee

I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as 'God on the cross.' In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross that symbolizes divine suffering. 'The cross of Christ ... is God's only self-justification in such a world" as ours....' 'The other gods were strong; but thou wast weak; they rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne; But to our wounds only God's wounds can speak, And not a god has wounds, but thou alone. ~ John R.W. Stott

So, it, of course, makes one wonder how many other people there might be who are completely innocent, who have been sent by the U.S. to countries where they've been interrogated, and in some instances it seems tortured. ~ Jane Mayer

I was trying to say something about Christianity, the idea that you have to be tortured to attain heaven. I didn't believe that. ~ John Lennon

A strange night, he thought. Somewhere now there is shooting and men are being hunted and imprisoned and tortured and murdered, some corner of a peaceful world is being trampled upon, and one knows it, helplessly, and life buzzes on in the bright bistros of the city, no one cares, and people go calmly to sleep, and I am sitting here with a woman between pale chrysanthemums and a bottle of calvados, and the shadow of love rises, trembling, lonesome, strange and sad, it too an exile from the safe gardens of the past, shy and wild and quick as if it had no right ~ Erich Maria Remarque

There is nothing to be found in human eyes, and that is their terrifying and dolorous enigma, their abominable and delusive charm. There is nothing but that which we put there ourselves. That is why honest gazes are only to be found in portraits.

The faded and weary eyes of martyrs, expressions tortured by ecstasy, imploring and suffering eyes, some resigned, others desperate... the gazes of saints, mendicants and princesses in exile, with pardoning smiles... the gazes of the possessed, the chosen and the hysterical... and sometimes of little girls, the eyes of Ophelia and Canidia, the eyes of virgins and witches... as you live in the museums, what eternal life, dolorous and intense, shines out of you! Like precious stones enshrined between the painted eyelids of masterpieces, you disturb us across time and across space, receivers of the dream which created you!

You have souls, but they are those of the artists who wished you into being, and I am delivered to despair and mortification because I have drunk the draught of poison congealed in the irises of your eyes.

The eyes of portraits ought to be plucked out. ~ Jean Lorrain

Van tortured himself with thoughts of insufficient filial affection - a long story of unconcern, amused scorn, physical repulsion, and habitual dismissal. He looked around, making wild amends, willing her spirit to give him an unequivocal, and indeed all-deciding sign, of continued being behind the veil of time, beyond the flesh of space. But no response came, not a petal fell on his bench, not a gnat touched his hand. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

So, if you don't summon a book and a light before dawn,
If you don't set your mind on honest aims and pursuits,
On waking, you'll be tortured by envy or lust.
Why so quick to remove a speck from your eye, when
If it's your mind, you put off the cure till next year?
Who's started has half finished: dare to be wise: begin! ~ Horace

On another plane, only a brute in a state of irrational fury can imagine that men should be sadistically
tortured in order to obtain their consent. Such an act only accomplishes the subjugation of one man by
another, in an outrageous relationship between persons. The representative of rational totality is content,
on the contrary, to allow the object to subdue the person in the soul of man. The highest mind is first of
all reduced to the level of the lowest by the police technique of joint accusation. Then five, ten, twenty
nights of insomnia will culminate an illusory conviction and will bring yet another dead soul into the
world. From this point of view, the only psychological revolution known to our times since Freud's has
been brought about by the NKVD and the political police in general. Guided by a determinist hypothesis
that calculates the weak points and the degree of elasticity of the soul, these new techniques have once
again thrust aside one of man's limits and have attempted to demonstrate that no individual psychology is
original and that the common measure of all human character is matter. They have literally created the
physics of the soul. ~ Albert Camus

Paris is a sensuous woman every man has loved, even if only in his dreams. Once he has been deep inside her, walked her streets and tasted her delights, he can never forget her. Yet no matter how strong the memory of her remains, it cannot prepare him for the sheer beauty of her nakedness as he gazes upon her for the second time; the intoxicating fragrance of her hair as it brushes against him as it did when she let him love her; the softness of her skin beneath his fingertips as he strokes her breathtakingly graceful form; or the searing fire which courses through every fiber of his soul now that she is within reach.

For every man blessed with a woman's love, she is a shrine to his happiness now that he need search no more. But for those who reside in obscurity within the lonely domicile of an empty heart, she is the hope of finding love. In his tortured heart, love waits for him at a corner cafe in the woman's smile two tables away; it lingers in the melodic laughter of a girl riding past him on a bicycle; and sometimes, when the woman is smiling at someone else, and the girl rides past him without notice, he finds love beneath the skirt of the darkly sensual woman waiting for him under a streetlamp. ~ Bobby Underwood

Not only was he not mad, but he was a musician, and my favorite men had always been musicians or writers or anything that involved the creative process and behaving like tortured artists ... I found financial insecurity a great aphrodisiac. ~ Marian Keyes

The idea that the spirits of those once tortured in the house might still be there was the avenue his imagination began to explore. The groaning of the wood sounded like screams from the dungeon and the clunking pipes were the implements of torture. His bedcovers seemed to offer less protection than they had done in his younger years, he felt naked and at the mercy of his thoughts, and it wasn't long before the skull he'd seen in the cellar had a face, manifested by fear and imagination. ~ Matthew Williams

You've tormented my dreams and tortured my days. I hear your voice in other women's voices. The scent of your hair teases my senses…a memory I can't expunge. You haunt me, coming between me and my work and my pleasures, and so I'm going to exorcise you. I'm going to take you, to satiate myself with you until I no longer want you. Since you won't come to me freely, you'll come to me under duress, but come to me you will. ~ Anne N. Reisser

Ohhhhhhh," she groaned, jerking up from the reclining seat as the tears exploded. She felt as devastated as if she were still in the body of the grizzled fighting man. Convulsing sobs of remorse tortured her energy body and she rocked it like a baby, holding her midsection, feeling as if her stomach would turn inside out. She struggled to speak, gulping in habit for air that didn't exist, which would have been useless to her energy lungs anyway.
She had to know.
"Who? Who ... was ... he?" she managed in spurts. "The boy - "
"You know the answer already, don't you?" Coriskancsia replied gently. ~ Lianne Downey

Exactly who bears responsibility for the spate of extrajudicial killings is unclear. Senior police officials privately accuse the military's intelligence services of committing the worst abuses, and complain that their men bear the brunt of Taliban reprisals. One retired officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, offered a still-murkier explanation: that in some cases, intelligence operatives tortured suspected militants, then handed them to allied police officers for execution. Whatever the truth, ~ Anonymous

This was my one brush with love. Was it love? It felt awful enough. I spent another two years crawling around in the skin of it, smoking too much and growing too thin and having stray thoughts of jumping from my balcony like a tortured heroine in a Russian novel. ~ Paula McLain

If others neither have goods we want nor can perform services we need, we make sure that they are at a safe distance and close ourselves off from them so that their emaciated and tortured bodies can make no inordinate claims on us. ~ Miroslav Volf

Melville had to fight, fight against the existing world, against his own very self. Only he would never quite put the knife in the heart of his paradisal ideal. Somehow, somewhere, somewhen, love should be a fulfillment, and life should be a thing of bliss. That was his fixed ideal. Fata Morgana. That was the pin he tortured himself on, like a pinned-down butterfly. ~ D.H. Lawrence

In 2001, my father finally succumbed to the bone cancer that had tortured him for seven years. His last weeks were a terrible, black icing on the cake, the agony, the slow twisting, thinning and snapping of his skeleton. Everything fell apart. ~ Peter Baynham

Those laboratory animals have done us no harm. They are tortured and murdered in the name of science. I know, I used to do it myself to my great shame. Is the benefit to humanity worth the sacrifice of so many animal lives? I say, No. ~ Lawrence Wright

As such, we must oppose torturing human beings for the same reason we oppose "choice" in abortion rights, because torture dehumanizes both the tortured and the torturer. We ought to be those insisting that capital punishment, where it exists, is not discriminatory against the poor or racial minorities and that it not exist as part of a system in which innocent persons are mistakenly executed. A death penalty that exempts the white and the affluent, while putting to death those without the power to evade such justice, is hardly what God set forth in the covenant with Noah or in the sword-wielding delegated authority to Caesar to punish evildoers. And, even short of the death penalty, we should care about impartiality before the law, in the making and in the enforcement of laws for all persons, regardless of race or ethnicity or background. ~ Russell D. Moore

For whatever it's worth, never fall a victim of the struggle. And when it so happens remain a soldier and a champion. ✊ ~ DON SANTO

When encountering emotional vampires, see what you can learn. It's your choice. You can simply feel tortured, resentful, impotent. Or, as I try to do, ask yourself, How can this interaction help me grow? ~ Judith Orloff

As a child, I was tortured because my mother was a brilliant seamstress who made most of my clothes. I was despised by the children at school because I looked like I was going to an opening every day. We weren't wealthy at all; we lived in a row house in Philadelphia. ~ Lynda Resnick

God, Abby, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, he said as he stared out the bay window onto the lake. The serene morning calm of the water was laughing at his riptide of emotions. In all his life, he'd never been as tortured as he was now. Rip his limbs apart, whip his back raw, waterboard him, anything but this. Because this ... this was far worse. It was her pain. Her torture that was destroying his sanity. He had no control over it. He couldn't stop it.
He hated that he wasn't strong enough to withstand this. Most of all, he hated that he cared so much about her.
Cause he knew.
He knew one certainty in all this.
She had managed to touch a piece of his ice-cold heart. And it wasn't letting him go. ~ Cindy Paterson

It's time to sort of get back to a basic message, the message that was given. At this time, the world has gone nuts, I think. And this film speaks
well, Christ spoke of faith, hope, love and forgiveness. And these are things I think we need to be reminded of again. He forgave as he was tortured and killed. And we could do with a little of that behavior. ~ Mel Gibson

Can't the United States see that when we allow someone to be tortured by our agents, it is not only the victim and the perpetrator who are corrupted, not only the 'intelligence' that is contaminated, but also everyone who looked away and said they did not know, everyone who consented tacitly to that outrage so they could sleep a little safer at night, all the citizens who did not march in the streets by the millions to demand the resignation of whoever suggested, even whispered, that torture is inevitable in our day and age, that we must embrace its darkness? ~ Ariel Dorfman

Fuck, Rach." His voice sounded tortured as he grabbed on to the back of my head and tugged me closer to him. "I never left you. Never. ~ Christina Lee

He couldn't regret Daemon's and Lucivar's existence, but he'd tortured himself for centuries with reports of what had been done to them. - Saetan ~ Anne Bishop

"Does she know that you love her?"
Billy raises his eyebrows.
"Why would she when I didn't? It wasn't like I read in books. A thunderclap.
Eyes meeting. Tortured glances. With Arsinoe it was more like . . . having cold
water poured down your back and learning to enjoy it."
"And does she love you?"
"I don't know. I think she might." He smiles. "I hope she does." ~ Kendra Blake

Even if I'm to be tortured, to be mistreated, to be humiliated, Echo doesn't have a right to fight against it. ~ Jun Mochizuki

Her hands clutched at his upper arms.
"Y-you make me feel ... "
He glanced up at her, saw the way she was biting her lower lip and the tortured frown between her closed eyes. "What do I make you feel, honey?" he prompted in a low voice, unable to look away from her beautiful face, and he rubbed the heel of his palm against the hard bud of her clitoris.
Her body went wire taut, arching like a hunter's bow as she gasped for him.
"Unbalanced. ~ Edie Harris

We weren't being mauled by lions.
We weren't being tortured with bamboo shoots shoved under our fingernails.
No Chinese water torture.
No burning at the stake.
We weren't even being interrogated under bright lights.
If only.
No, what we endured was a special kind of torture, designed especially for us by The Rat, that made me wish for a bamboo manicure. - Simon Mugford ~ Claudia Osmond

I had left home (like all Jewish girls) in order to eat pork and take birth control pills. When I first shared an intimate evening with my husband, I was swept away by the passion (so dormant inside myself) of a long and tortured existence. The physical cravings I had tried so hard to deny, finally and ultimately sated ... But enough about the pork. ~ Roseanne Barr

Fate is a comfortable mistress, Wes, if you accept her demands." Fate, the mistress that four years ago had put him the hands of mercenaries who turned him over to the British to be tortured.
"Listen to the monk teaching me about mistresses." Wesley chuckled.

-Vitor & Wesley ~ Katharine Ashe

It still seems a strange decision, though, for the tortured to turn torturer."
"On the contrary, nothing could be more natural. In my experience, people do as they are done to. You were sold by your father and bought by your husband, and yet you choose to buy and sell. ~ Joe Abercrombie

She was everywhere. She was screaming in her tortured body. She was watching from cameras in every room. She was the false weather system and the storage devices. She was the gate keeper, throwing six shirts over her swan-brothers necks...opening six doors for her brothers to step through as young men, though their bodies were long gone, used up by the organ banks of the upper castes.

A Lamentation of Swans ~ J.A. Ironside

This is a man in need. His fear is naked and obvious, but he's lost ... Somewhere in his darkness.
His eyes wide and bleak and tortured. I can soothe him. Join him briefly in the darkness and bring him into the light. ~ E.L. James

You've got to be prepared for the names they are going to call you compared to your male peers ... You will be a floozy and a slattern. He will be virile and a ladies' man. You will be a freakshow, a retching wretch, a sloppy drunk. He will be charismatic, vainglorious, a ferocious drunk and Dionysian. You will be indiscriminate and desperate. He will be generous, tortured and driven. ~ Courtney Love

Affirmative action was designed originally for "women and other minorities" but the phrase has become just another tortured euphemism. Female conscientiousness and eagerness to please have always made women good students and natural test takers. Jews have gloried in scholarship throughout the ages, and Asians of both sexes score so high on SATs and IQ tests that they regard affirmative action as an impediment. Affirmative action really means favoritism for blacks for the sake of racial peace, but the favor is pure chimera, and so, increasingly, is the peace. ~ Florence King

Do you fast? Then feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, visit the sick, do not forget the imprisoned, have pity on the tortured, comfort those who grieve and who weep, be merciful, humble, kind, calm, patient, sympathetic, forgiving, reverent, truthful and pious, so that God might accept your fasting and might plentifully grant you the fruits of repentance. ~ Saint John Chrysostom

The shadow of my sorrow. Let's see, 'tis very true. My griefs lie all within and these external manners of laments are mere shadows to the unseen grief which swells with silence in the tortured soul.
There lies the substance. ~ William Shakespeare

The begging snapped into a sharp muffled shriek, just one, just the one terrible muted cry. Krista couldn't move. She stared at the door as if it were a nightmare painting from Hieronymus Bosch's personal, tortured hell. Then ~ Robert Crais

I'm not some tortured, abandoned creature, Wayne," Marasi said, finding herself smiling at her distorted reflection in a ladle. "I'm not sitting around pining and dreaming for someone else to decide if I should be happy. There's nothing there. Whether that's due to actual lack of affection on his part, or more to stubbornness, I don't care. I've moved on. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Jesus comes from Nazareth, a town from which folks said nothing good could come. He knew suffering from the moment he entered the world as a baby refugee born in the middle of a genocide. Jesus knew poverty and pain until he was tortured and executed on a Roman cross. This is the Jesus we are called to follow. With his coming we learn that the most dangerous place for Christians to be is in comfort and safety, detached from the suffering of others. Places that are physically safe can be spiritually deadly. ~ Shane Claiborne

The Empress doesn't get collared, or caged, or tortured. ~ Kresley Cole

In Christianity, it's very clear that the god we worship is equal to love. The bible says, 'God is love'. The god we worship was sacrificed, crucified on the cross, tortured, spit on, and was still forgiving. This is our highest example. ~ Mosab Hassan Yousef

(To The Youth) ... you know and everybody knows that life has failed to bring the light of hope to my eyes, draw a smile on my face, and create joy in my heart. You know and everybody knows that being tortured for you, being imprisoned for you and suffering for your sake has been the only joy I have ever had ... it is from your joy that I feel comfort, it is your freedom that brings the light of hope to my sight, it is your comfort that I feel relaxed in my heart ... I cannot speak well or write well ... please note the hidden force under my simple lousy words.. please understand ... please understand ! I love you and consider you my only friend; all my life, all the days and nights, every moment of my life is a witness to my love and dedication for you. Your freedom is my doctrine, your success is my affection, your future is my only hope! ~ Ali Shariati

I like Muhammad a lot, because he's like us more than anybody else. Jesus is just so exalted, and Buddha is just so exalted, it's almost beyond our reach. Muhammad is more human, more self-doubting, even self-tortured at times. ~ Deepak Chopra

Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay? ~ Mary Shelley

I do think that there's art that is tortured, but I prefer art that has the joy in it. ~ Josh Ritter

Fortunately, no matter how many times she is pushed down, she bounds up again. No matter how many times she is forbidden, quelled, cut back, diluted, tortured, touted as unsafe, dangerous, mad, and other derogations, she emanates upward in women, so that even the most quiet, even the most restrained woman keeps a secret place for Wild Woman, Even the more repressed woman has a secret life, with secret thoughts and secret feelings which are lush and wild, that is, natural. Even the most captured woman guards the place of the wildish self, for she knows intuitively that someday there will be a loophole, an aperture, a chance, and she will hightail it to escape. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

In his 1973 "literary investigation," The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn exposed the practices of the Soviet penal system: "If the intellectuals in the plays of Chekhov who spent all their time guessing what would happen in twenty, thirty or forty years had been told that in forty years interrogation by torture would be practiced in Russia; that prisoners would have their skulls squeezed within iron rings, that a human being would be lowered into an acid bath; that they would be trussed up naked to be bitten by ants and bedbugs; that a ramrod heated over a primus stove would be thrust up their anal canal (the 'secret brand'); that a man's genitals would be slowly crushed beneath the toe of a jackboot; and that, in the luckiest possible circumstances, prisoners would be tortured by being kept from sleeping for a week, by thirst, and by being beaten to a bloody pulp, not one of Chekhov's plays would have gotten to its end because all the heroes would have gone off to insane asylums. ~ Donnie Eichar