Words That Wound Quotes

... did it make a difference if the remark never got back to the person about whom it was made? She thought not. The harm is done when the words are uttered: that is the act of belittlement, the act of diminishing the other, and it is that act which would cause pain to the victim. You said that about me? The wrong was located in the making of the cruel remark, rather than in the pain it might later cause. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

What magnetic force draws us to scenes of pain, and words that wound us? You have seen this, I told myself as I marched along to that apartment. You have seen this already, you've lived through this, spare yourself ~ Andrew Sean Greer

My father used to say women yapped too much, that some women would be better off not talking at all. So I'd grown up eating my words, and it wasn't until later that I realized how many had gotten backed up inside me. ~ Lisa Ko

I don't have Ryan's way with words. They're hard for me. Difficult. At least words that have emotion. ~ Katie McGarry

Put it into words - you can't feel words. I think that if I could give a name to what I feel it would go away. Find the word that describes the feeling and say it over and over until it's merely a sound. ~ Carrie Fisher

Words are useful, sir. That's from the communicating point of view. They come into their own then. When you think about it, even Morse code, which seems to be only dots and dashes, is actually dots and dashes signifying letters, and letters that go to make words. I don't know where we'd be without them. For instance, I wouldn't be able to say "I don't know where we'd be without them" if we were without them....

But for myself, I admit I find words quite handy, especially during, for instance, speech or writing. Yes, I think I'd find both of those tricky without words. ~ Bill James

He became aware of a man drawn
alongside them, frozen in stillness even
in the midst of battle, and
knew that what had just happened had
been seen, and overheard.
He turned, the truth on his face. Stripped
bare, he could not hide himself in that
moment. Laurent, he thought, and lifted
his gaze to meet the eyes of the man who
had witnessed the last words of Lord
Touars.
It wasn't Laurent. It was Jord.
He was staring at Damen in horror, his
sword lax in his hand. ~ C.S. Pacat

One of the plainest truths about both towns and individuals is that they usually don't turn into what we tell them to be, but what they are told they are. ~ Fredrik Backman

Words are really a mask,' he said. 'They rarely express the true meaning; in fact they tend to hide it. If you can live in fantasy, then you don't need religion, since with fantasy you can understand that after death, man is reincorporated in the Universe. Once again I will say that it is not important to know whether there is something beyond this life. What counts is having done the right sort of work; if that is right, then everything else will be all right. The Universe, or Nature, is for me what God is for others. It is wrong to think that Nature is the enemy of man, something to be conquered. Rather, we should look upon Nature as a mother, and should peaceably surrender ourselves to it. If we take that attitude, we will simply feel that we are returning to the Universe as all other things do, all animals and plants. We are all just infinitesimal parts of the Whole. It is absurd to rebel; we must deliver ourselves up to the great current ... ~ Miguel Serrano

I grew up hearing words like snakeroot, sassafras, mullein - things that had wondrous, mysterious sounds in their names. ~ Jan Karon

The Jesus Trajectory Love is recklessness, not reason. Reason seeks a profit. Loves comes on strong, consuming herself, unabashed. Yet in the midst of suffering, Love proceeds like a millstone, hard-surfaced and straight forward. Having died to self-interest, she risks everything and asks for nothing. Love gambles away every gift God bestows. The words above were written by the great Sufi mystic Jalalludin Rumi.6 But better than almost anything in Christian scripture, they closely describe the trajectory that Jesus himself followed in life. ~ Cynthia Bourgeault

And at that moment, for no reason he could put into words, the hourglass shattered. No more, the cool gray sift of days, the diligent waiting for the future to trickle forth. Lazlo's dream was spilled out into the air, the color and storm of it no longer a future to be reached, but a cyclone here and now. He didn't know what, but as surely as one feels the sting of shards when an hourglass tips of a shelf and smashes, he knew that something was happening.
Right now. ~ Laini Taylor

Usually the science-fiction fan has some indication they're a sci-fi fan and, therefore, a 'Stargate' fan. In other words, they could be wearing a rubber head or some kind of costume or just a T-shirt that gives them away. ~ Richard Dean Anderson

They made their way into the sleeping bag. It was crowded, and she was still naked, so it only took about three seconds flat for him to get hard again.
She reached between them. "Are you sure there aren't any more condoms?"
He flexed at her words, then groaned softly. It was going to be a long night. "Positive."
He was torn between asking her to stop tormenting him and begging her to keep on doing it. The outcome of the latter as inevitable, and in a sleeping bag, more than a little messy.
Just a few seconds more, he told himself as he closed his eyes and gave himself up to the steady stroking of her hand. He would stop her before things got out of control.
But Phoebe being Phoebe and his attraction to her being what it was, that point of "out of control" arrived a lot faster than he would have realized. Painfully aroused and right on the edge, he grabbed her wrist.
"You're killing me."
"So not my purpose."
Then she stunned him by opening the sleeping bag, pushing it away and sliding down between his legs. As her fingers toyed with his testicles, her mouth settled on his erection. From there it was a thirty-seven-second journey to heaven. ~ Susan Mallery

We sometimes just have to let things be.

There are times in life that things happen, and we just cannot control them. There are times when we don't want things to happen, but they do. Things that we don't want to know, we learn. Times in which people we can't live without, we have to let go.

The greatest learning is accepting what has, what is, and what will be. Remaining focussed on where we want to go, and how we want to get there. It might not go the way we planned, or the way we hoped it would be. No one said life would be easy, but at least we keep trying, and working hard at making it the best life it can be. ~ Aisha Mirza

In dreams the images in the mind, in the subconscious, merge with and obliterate the perceptions from the astral senses, in a similar way that in daily life the subconscious causes the external world to be perceived with the colorations of thoughts, feelings, images, and emotions; in other words, we daydream or get lost in thoughts. ~ Belsebuub

God, it's been a terrible idea the whole time, hasn't it? What are we even doing?" His smile is slow, but it carries a promise behind it - absolute, unspeakable joy. "Falling in love." "Oh." The words warm places I'd forgotten were chilled. I touch my thumb to his lips and trace that smile, dizzy with the realization that this is real. This is my life. And there are no secrets left to ruin it. "Are we going to keep doing it?" "Yes." He leans closer, until his breath kisses my lips. "Every second of every day. ~ Joelle Knox

The mistake so many marketers make is that they conjoin the urgency of making another sale with the timing to earn the right to make that sale. In other words, you must build trust before you need it. Building trust right when you want to make a sale is just too late. ~ Seth Godin

James Baldwin's words haunt: "People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster." Are we a nation of monsters? ~ Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

I lay awake listening to the rain, and at first it was as pleasant to my ear and my mind as it had long been desired; but before I fell asleep it had become a majestic and finally a terrible thing, instead of a sweet sound and symbol. It was accusing and trying me and passing judgment. Long I lay still under the sentence, listening to the rain, and then at last listening to words which seemed to be spoken by a ghostly double beside me. He was muttering: The all-night rain puts out summer like a torch. In the heavy, black rain falling straight from invisible, dark sky to invisible, dark earth the heat of summer is annihilated, the splendour is dead, the summer is gone. The midnight rain buries it away where it has buried all sound but its own. I am alone in the dark still night, and my ear listens to the rain piping in the gutters and roaring softly in the trees of the world. Even so will the rain fall darkly upon the grass over the grave when my ears can hear it no more…

The summer is gone, and never can it return. There will never be any summer any more, and I am weary of everything… I am alone.

The truth is that the rain falls for ever and I am melting into it. Black and monotonously sounding is the midnight and solitude of the rain. In a little while or in an age – for it is all one – I shall know the full truth of the words I used to love, I knew not why, in my days of nature, in the days before the rain: 'Blessed are the dead that the rain rains on. ~ Edward Thomas

Dex crouched down next to her, lips level with her ear. "You know, you were a lot more fun three years ago."
It was like he wanted her to kill him.
She turned, unfazed that their faces were separated by mere centimeters. So close she could see the pores in his caramel skin, the deep brown of his eyes, and the raised scar that rested near his temple.
She'd given him that scar.
What she also noticed was how her heart no longer fluttered like it used to when he looked at her. She used to love his eyes, their unspoken words. The feel of his skin against hers during their passionate nights, but now those thoughts made her cringe. She guarded herself against those details scrounged from distant memories. They were no longer part of a blissful reality but a hurtful past.
"A lot has changed in three years, Dextro," Andi said calmly. "Now if you don't move, I'll give you a new scar, and this time," she said, pointing to his right temple, "it will be across your neck."
He put his arms up in defense before rising, distancing himself from her. ~ Sasha Alsberg

Then the voices of the Ainur, like unto harps and lutes, and pipes and trumpets, and viols and organs, and like unto countless choirs singing with words, began to fashipn the theme of Iluvatar to a great music; and a sound arose of endless interchanging melodies woven in harmony that passed beyond hearing into the depths and into the heights, and the places of the dwelling of Iluvatar were filled to overflowing, and the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Having completed its conquest of California in 1844, the United States looked across the Pacific for new business opportunities. In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo (then called Edo) Bay with four men-of-war, and handed over a letter for the Japanese emperor from the American president which began with the ominous words, 'You know that the United States of America now extend from sea to sea.' Denied an audience with the emperor, Perry retreated with subtle threats to return with more firepower if the Japanese did not agree to open their ports to American trade. They refused. He did as he said; and the Japanese succumbed. ~ Pankaj Mishra

Nature is full of patterns and we humans love finding them, creating them, repeating them. This is the core of language, math, music, and even ritual, which is the repetition of words or actions deemed worthy of representing something bigger than ourselves. My view is that all over the world and across time, these are all a form of art, an elaborate performance or a secret poem, all vital in their ability to help us face the nature of time and change, life and death, and everything else we cannot control. ~ Sasha Sagan

When we go to tell our stories, people think we want it to have gone different. People want to say things like "sore losers" and "move on already," "quit playing the blame game." But is it a game? Only those who have lost as much as we have see the particularly nasty slice of smile on someone who thinks they're winning when they say "Get over it." This is the thing: If you have the option to not think about or even consider history, whether you learned it right or not, or whether it even deserves consideration, that's how you know you're on board the ship that serves hors d'oeuvres and fluffs your pillows, while others are out at sea, swimming or drowning, or clinging to little inflatable rafts that they have to take turns keeping inflated, people short of breath, who've never even heard of the words hors d'oeuvres or fluff. Then someone from up on the yacht says, "It's too bad those people down there are lazy, and not as smart and able as we are up here, we who have built these strong, large, stylish boats ourselves, we who float the seven seas like kings." And then someone else on board says something like, "But your father gave you this yacht, and these are his servants who brought the hors d'oeuvres." At which point that person gets tossed overboard by a group of hired thugs who'd been hired by the father who owned the yacht, hired for the express purpose of removing any and all agitators on the yacht to keep them from making unnecessary waves, or even referencing the fat ~ Tommy Orange

However, the real beauty is not in the words themselves, but in the listener that has the power to understand them. ~ Luis Marques

Computer science only indicates the retrospective omnipotence of our technologies. In other words, an infinite capacity to process data (but only data
i.e. the already given) and in no sense a new vision. With that science, we are entering an era of exhaustivity, which is also an era of exhaustion. ~ Jean Baudrillard

Words can," Susan said. "And tone of voice. You're just so goddamned autonomous that you won't explain yourself to anybody. ~ Robert B. Parker

And yet, out of the blue, a tender moment would erupt so suddenly between us that the words I longed to tell him would almost slip out of my mouth. ~ Andre Aciman

Why don't you just spit it out?" she said sharply. "Just say what I know you're dying to say - 'Eena, I told you so!'"

"All I'm trying to say is that if you hadn't used those powers in the first place, Gemdorin would never have known about them, the dragon's heart would never have been uncovered, and consequently you would never have had to abuse those powers to defeat him. Then we wouldn't be in this predicament right now."

She summed it up for him concisely. "In other words, 'I told you so!' ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

However complicated you think it is, everything is always more complicated than that.
There are no shortcuts. Not to understanding and not to knowledge. You can't put anyone into a box.
Listen, even a stone isn't the same as any other stone, so I don't know where you all think you get off labeling humans with simple words and thinking you know everything you need.
But most people can't live that way, even some of the time. They say: only exceptional people can cross the borders. The truth is: anyone can cross, everyone has it in them. But only exceptional people can bear to look it in the eye. ~ Naomi Alderman, The Power

(a) A writer always wears glasses and never combs his hair. Half the time he feels angry about everything and the other half depressed. He spends most of his life in bars, arguing with other dishevelled, bespectacled writers. He says very 'deep' things. He always has amazing ideas for the plot of his next novel, and hates the one he has just published.
(b) A writer has a duty and an obligation never to be understood by his own generation; convinced, as he is, that he has been born into an age of mediocrity, he believes that being understood would mean losing his chance of ever being considered a genius. A writer revises and rewrites each sentence many times. The vocabulary of the average man is made up of 3,000 words; a real writer never uses any of these, because there are another 189,000 in the dictionary, and he is not the average man.
(c) Only other writers can understand what a writer is trying to say. Even so, he secretly hates all other writers, because they are always jockeying for the same vacancies left by the history of literature over the centuries. And so the writer and his peers compete for the prize of 'most complicated book': the one who wins will be the one who has succeeded in being the most difficult to read.
(d) A writer understands about things with alarming names, like semiotics, epistemology, neoconcretism. When he wants to shock someone, he says things like: 'Einstein is a fool', or 'Tolstoy was the clown of the bourgeoisie.' Everyone is ~ Paulo Coelho

Abstraction didn't have to be limited to a kind of rectilinear geometry or even a simple curve geometry. It could have a geometry that had a narrative impact. In other words, you could tell a story with the shapes. It wouldn't be a literal story, but the shapes and the interaction of the shapes and colors would give you a narrative sense. You could have a sense of an abstract piece flowing along and being part of an action or activity. That sort of turned me on. ~ Frank Stella