#suffer

She would have thought that working and living in continuous happiness, harmony, and security day after day would lead to mental lethargy, that her writing would suffer from too much happiness, that she needed a balanced life with down days and miseries to keep the sharp edge on her work. But the idea that an artist needed to suffer to do her best work was a conceit of the young and inexperienced. The happier she grew, the better she wrote. ↗

— Dean Koontz

#starving-artist #suffering #writing #writing-process #life

Time and sunshine healed a sore, but the process was slow, and new boils appeared if I didn't stay dry. ↗

— Yann Martel

#life-of-pi #metaphor #pain #suffering #time

When someone says to us, as Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, "Darling, I care about your suffering," a deep healing begins. ↗

— Tara Brach

#empathy #healing #suffering #life

Contrary to what we may have been taught to think, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need not scar us for life. It does mark us. What we allow the mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands. ↗

— Bell Hooks

#love #pain #redemption #scars #suffering

Goodbye, Room." I wave up at Skylight. "Say goodbye," I tell Ma. "Goodbye, Room." Ma says it but on mute. I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened. Then we go out the door. ↗

— Emma Donoghue

#love #loyalty #motherhood #suffering #love

It is the rub that polishes the jewel,” Enso Roshi says. “Nobody ever gets to nirvana without going through samsara. Nobody ever gets to heaven, without going through hell. The center of all things, the truth, is surrounded by demons. ↗

— T. Scott McLeod

#enlightenment #love #meditation #peace #spiritual-journey

For the first time in this 11 years--I have come to love the darkness--for I believe now that it is a part, a very, very small part of Jesus' dakness and pain on earth. You have taught me to accept it [as] a "spiritual side of 'your work'"... (Mother Teresa, quoated in Kolodiejchuk, p. 208). ↗

— Brian Kolodiejchuk

#spirituality #suffering #love

The soul that loves and suffers is in the sublime state. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#love #pain #soul #sublime #suffering

But why all these questions? Because I'm in love and I'm afraid of suffering. Don't be afraid, the only way to avoid that suffering would be to refuse to love. ↗

— Paulo Coelho

#pain #suffering #love

I know that suffering is one place where He ministers to us the most. So to think that we've had our quota would be foolish. I am just longing for the day when all the pain stops. ↗

— Mary Beth Chapman

#god-s-love #pain #perseverance #suffering #love