Open Wound Quotes & Sayings

I told him exactly what had happened and he listened with seeming impassiveness, but his nostrils twitched and his eyes blazed as I told how the ruthless hands of the Count had held his wife in that terrible and horrid position, with her mouth to the open wound in his breast. It interested me, even at that moment, to see that whilst the face of white set passion worked convulsively over the bowed head, the hands tenderly and lovingly stroked the ruffled hair. — Bram Stoker

This is the first step in using the truth as a scalpel: You find that the injustice that created a wound is no longer true, right now, in this moment. You discover that perhaps what you believe hurt you so badly was never true. Even if it was true, it doesn't mean that now it is true. By using the truth, you open the wound and see the injustice from a new perspective. — Miguel Ruiz

Close thine ear against him that shall open his mouth secretly against another. If thou receivest not his words, they fly back and wound the reporter. If thou dost receive them, they fly forward and wound the receiver. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound,
then from my eyes,
my ears,
my mouth.
It tasted like salt and failure. The bright red shame of being unloved soaked the grass in front of our house, the bricks of the path, the steps of the porch. My heart spasmed among the peonies like a trout. — E. Lockhart

A relationship that has any depth and power at all will inevitably penetrate our usual shield of defenses, exposing our most tender and sensitive spots, and leaving us feeling vulnerable - literally, 'able to be wounded.' To love, in this sense, is to open ourselves to being hurt. The dream of love would have us believe that something is wrong if a relationship causes us pain. Yet trying to avoid the wound of love only creates a more permanent kind of damage. It prevents us from opening ourselves fully, and this keeps us from ever forming a deeply satisfying intimate connection. — John Welwood

Does the open wound in another's breast soften the pain of the gaping wound in our own? Or does the blood which is welling from another man's side staunch that which is pouring from our own? Does the general anguish of our fellow creatures lessen our own private and particular anguish? No, no, each suffers on his own account, each struggles with his own grief, each sheds his own tears. — Alexandre Dumas

Human trafficking is an open wound on the body of contemporary society, a scourge upon the body of Christ ... It is a crime against humanity. — Pope Francis

The problem with all men, and werewolves in particular, was their odd perspective. Sean viewed the gash across his ribs as a scratch. I viewed it as an open wound made by a monomolecular blade able to cut through the werewolf armor and contaminate his body with extraterrestrial microorganisms and possibly poison. We agreed to meet somewhere in the middle. He allowed me to sterilize and seal the wound, and I promised to stop threatening to restrain him. — Ilona Andrews

There was no love in my heart for this man - hell, I didn't even like him - but that didn't stop my hand from trembling as I pressed the pad against the wound. He groaned, his eyes popping open.

"Don't move," I warned. "I'm trying to stop the bleeding."

"With what? Acid?" he growled. — Lisa Kessler

The protesters, in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv, revealed an open and raw wound at the heart of Israeli society, the pain of a community crying out over a sense of discrimination, racism, and of being unanswered. — Reuven Rivlin

I wanted a drink. There were a hundred reasons why a man will want a drink, but I wanted one now for the most elementary reason of all. I didn't want to feel what I was feeling, and a voice within was telling me that I needed a drink, that I couldn't bear it without it.
But that voice is a liar. You can always bear the pain. It'll hurt, it'll burn like acid in an open wound, but you can stand it. And, as long as you can make yourself go on choosing the pain over the relief, you can keep going. — Lawrence Block

Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more. Such grief does not desire consolation. It feeds on the sense of its hopelessness. Lamentations spring only from the constant craving to re-open the wound. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The thing about love - no one is untouchable. It's as wild as that, as raw as an open flesh wound exposed to salty sea water, but when it actually breaks, it's silent. You're just screaming on the inside and no one can hear it. — Cecelia Ahern

God had poked His finger down into my nerves and gently, almost without thinking, brought a little confusion among those threads. And God had pulled His finger back, and behold
there were filaments and fine rootlike threads on His finger from the threads of my nerves. And thereremained an open hole behind His finger which was the finger of God, and a wound in my brain behind the path of His finger.
But after God had touched me with the finger of His hand, He let me be and touched me no more and let nothing evil come upon me. He let me depart in peace and He let me depart with the open hole. And nothing evil will come upon me from God who is the Lord through all Eternity ... — Knut Hamsun

I measure my life in sentences pressed out, line by line, like the lustrous ooze on the underside of the snail, the snail's secret open seam, its wound, leaking attar. — Cynthia Ozick

Why, she asked herself, why keep a wound open when forgiveness can close it? — Alexander McCall Smith

Rhys lowered his heard, his mouth on hers before he knew what was happening. Her lips moved beneath his, open and eager. He groaned and wound his arms around her. The kiss was ecstasy, bliss
pure rapture.
Desire blazed through him as hot as dragon fire. — Donna Grant

In August 1867, a thirteen-year-old142 boy who had severely cut his arm while operating a machine at a fair in Glasgow was admitted to Lister's infirmary. The boy's wound was open and smeared with grime - a setup for gangrene. But rather than amputating the arm, Lister tried a salve of carbolic acid, hoping to keep the arm alive and uninfected. The wound teetered on the edge of a terrifying infection, threatening to become an abscess. But Lister persisted, intensifying his application of carbolic acid paste. For a few weeks, the whole effort seemed hopeless. But then, like a fire running to the end of a rope, the wound began to dry up. A month later, when the poultices were removed, the skin had completely healed underneath. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

I wanted so much to forget the past, but it wouldn't go away, it hung around like an open wound that refused to scar over, an open window that no amount of muscle could shut. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

The sun had long set, but one blood-red gash like an open wound lay low in the distant west. — Arthur Conan Doyle

With that, Adam was placed into a deep sleep, his side wounded, and from that open wound was brought forth a soft-glowing bone. — Gene Edwards

The biological imperative to live - indeed, live forever - was burned into our brains, into our emotional self-model,
over the course of millennia. But our brand-new cognitive self-models
tell us that all attempts to realize this imperative will ultimately be futile.
Mortality, for us, is not only an objective fact but a subjective chasm, an open wound in our phenomenal self-model. We have a deep, inbuilt existential conflict, and we seem to be the first creatures on this planet to
experience it consciously. — Thomas Metzinger

For Alice and Mattia, the high school years were an open wound that had seemed so deep that it could never heal. They had passed through them without breathing, he rejecting the world and she feeling rejected by it, and eventually they had noticed that it didn't make all that much difference. They had formed a defective and asymmetrical friendship, made up of long absences and much silence, a clean and empty space where both could come back to breathe when the walls of their school became too close for them to ignore the feeling of suffocation. — Paolo Giordano

There was a contradiction within Vikas, an open wound: though he was fascinated by the poor, good at joshing with them, he was afraid, thanks to his bourgeois background, of being perceived as poor. Poverty equaled failure. — Karan Mahajan

I was the one with the open wound, and the river waters turned red when I bathed in them. My sadness is greater than the heavens. — Laura Restrepo

If Messenger would be to open his mouth right now, his voice would be a terrible wound. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Interpretative thoughts settle on a bare sensory perception like a swarm of blue-bottles on an open wound. — Nanamoli Thera

It is as if producing a creative work tears a piece from your soul. When it is ripped completely free of you, the wound must bleed for a while. How similar it is to letting go of a dream, your hope, or your heart's desire. You must open up and let it drain. — Lynn Cullen

My tats were but temporal attempts to heal my soul, as my heart remained an open wound. — S.R. Grey

I pause, examining her eyes, and then move forward with caution. "So if I kissed you right now, I wouldn't be taking advantage of you?"
"No, but I might be taking advantage of you. Your breath smells about as bad as the bottle." She fans her nose with a smile.
"Trust me. You can take advantage of me and I won't mind, even when I sober up." I press my lips to hers, feeling my heart thump in my chest as her breath catches.
It grows silent as we lie with our foreheads touching and our breaths mingling. I place my hand on her hip, shutting my eyes, feeling the intensity of the moment like an open wound. — Jessica Sorensen

I'd wear any of my private attire for the world to see. But I would rather have an open flesh wound than ever wear a band aid in public. — Lady Gaga

Ironically, white America will catapult books about race to the top of the best-seller list, even as racism remains a national open wound. Obsession ain't solution, however, because reading even at its most intense and verisimilitudinous is vicarious, and once you close the book you're off the hook. — Marita Golden

Grief will happen either as an open healing wound or a closed festering wound, either honestly or dishonestly, either appropriately or inappropriately. But emotions will be expressed. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

I open doors, I close doors," he wrote. He loved no one, he loved everyone. He loved sex, he hated sex. Life is a lie, truth is a lie. His thoughts ended with a healing wound. "I stand naked when I draw. God holds my hand and we sing together." His manifesto as an artist. I let the confessional aspects fall away, and I accepted those words as a communion wafer. He had cast the line that would seduce me, ultimately bind us together. I folded the letter and put it back in the envelope, not knowing what would happen next. — Patti Smith

I hide myself to avoid others; but the lust for life reasserts itself, through the boredom or in the inflection of distress. It's an escape, a tuneless melody, a painless lament. Broken line of a poem missing its author, writing of a deconstructed life, scar of a wound still open, the pain of living without love or being loved tarnishes desire, dulls the look, weakens the heart. — Anne De Gandt

At last he stopped, and she stared down at the printed column of words, unable to comprehend a single one. His hand, warm and steady, wound its way around hers, wrapping it like a spider would its prey. She surrendered it to him, unable to watch even as his thumb traced the place, just above her knuckles, where he had once written his number in deep violet. Isobel ceased to breathe. Her heart pounded in her chest, her thoughts shattering into senseless fragments. All the while, her eyes remained trained and unblinking on the open page. Lines without meaning stared up at her, little more than black sticks in an otherwise white world. — Kelly Creagh

It was hard to be honest, to open up, and reveal something that sounded crazy. Because once you told someone the truth, that person had a piece of you - and they could belittle it, destroy it. They could turn your confession into a wound that never healed. — Sarah Cross

For every bandaged wound
I'll scrape another open — Adrienne Rich

The violence interferes. It sticks its fingers into everything and tears it open. It all comes apart, and I loath myself for waiting this long to end it. I despise myself for taking the easy options night after night. A hatred is wound up and let go in me. It hacks at my spirit and brings it to its knees, next to me. It coughs and suffocates me as my own hatred for myself becomes overwhelming. — Markus Zusak

The thing about trees is that they know what to do. When a leaf loses its colour, it's not because its time is up and it's dying, it's because the tree is taking back into itself the nutrients the leaf's been holding in reserve for it, out there on the twig, and why leaves change colour in autumn is because the tree is preparing for winter, it's filling itself with its own stored health so it can withstand the season. Then, clever tree, it literally pushes the used leaf off with the growth that's coming behind it. But because that growth has to protect itself through winter too, the tree fills the little wound in its branch or twig where the leaf was with a protective corky stuff which seals it against cold and bacteria.
Otherwise every leaf lost would be an open wound on a tree and a single tree would be covered in thousands of little wounds.
Clever trees. — Ali Smith

Today the heart of God is an open wound of love. He aches over our distance and preoccupation. He mourns that we do not draw near to Him. He grieves that we have forgotten Him. He weeps over our obsession with muchness and manyness. He longs for our presence. — Richard J. Foster

They stared at each other. Every ocean, every river, every minute they had walked together was in their gaze. He said nothing and she said nothing. She kneeled by him, her hands on him, on his chest, on his heart, on his lungs that took air in but could not move air out, on his open wound; her eyes were on him, and in their eyes was every block of uncounted, unaccounted-for time, every moment they had lived since June 22, 1941, the day war started for the Soviet Union. Her eyes were filled with everything she felt for him. Her eyes were true. — Paullina Simons

As there is no screen or ceiling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so is there no bar or wall in the soul where man, the effect, ceases, and God, the cause, begins. The walls are taken away. We lie open on one side to the deeps of spiritual nature, to the attributes of God. Justice we see and know, Love, Freedom, Power. These natures no man ever got above, but they tower over us, and most in the moment when our interests tempt us to wound them. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

In such a dreamy mood one may find one may well wound one's feet against sharp stones, forget to doff one's hat to distinguished persons, bid one's friends good morning in the middle of the night, and dash one's head against the first front door one comes to, because one had forgot to open it; in short, the spirit wears one's body like an ill-fitting garment that is everywhere too wide, too long, too uncomfortable. — E.T.A. Hoffmann

Our favorite film is Vertigo. Amy Eleni and I must watch it seventeen or eighteen times a year, and with each viewing our raptness grows looser and looser; we don't need the visuals anymore
one or the other of us can go into the kitchen halfway through and call out the dialogue while making up two cups of Horlicks. From the minute you see empty, beautiful, blond Madeleine Elster, you know she is doomed because she exists in a way that Scottie, the male lead, just doesn't. You know that Madeleine is in big trouble, because she's a vast wound in a landscape where wounds aren't allowed to stay open
people have to shut up and heal up. She's in trouble because the film works to a plan that makes trauma speak itself out, speak itself to excess until it dies; this film at the peak of its slyness, when people sweat and lick their lips excessively and pound their chests and grab their hair and twist their heads from side to side, performing this unspeakable torment. — Helen Oyeyemi

Kiera was a scar across my heart that would never fully heal, no matter how many random encounters I placed across it. My poor imitations of her were only ripping open the wound again and again. Good or bad, she was forever a part of me. Kellan Kyle — S.C. Stephens

There is no protection. To be female in this place is to be an open wound that cannot heal. Even if scars form, the festering is ever below. — Toni Morrison

Perceptive people like you wound more easily than others. But if we're going to work on God's side, we have to decide to open our hearts to the griefs and pain all around us. It's not an easy decision. A dangerous one too. And a tiny narrow door to enter into a whole new world.
But in that world a great experience waits for us: meeting the One who's entered there before us. He suffers more than any of us could because His is the deepest emotion and the highest perception ... He doesn't just leave us and Himself in the anguish. At the point where His ultimate in love meets His total capacity to absorb and feel all our agony, there the miracle happens and the exterior situation changes. I've seen that miracle — Catherine Marshall

Just leave me alone, I want to be alone, she said when Jack tried to open the car door. She hit the lock, and wound the window up. Since the roof was down, it was a fairly pointless exercise. — Sarah Mayberry

I got off a plane today at the airbase and I met a whole bunch of military folks there waiting to see me, they all made reference to my son and his military service and expressed their condolences. And although it's still kind of an open wound, it gave me a sense of strength knowing they all meant it. — Beau Biden

What is real is that adultery destroys tens of thousands of families every year across America. What is real is that adultery scars tens of thousands of children emotionally and psychologically every year. What is real is that adultery is an open wound in a relationship which more often than not overflows into domestic violence or worse. — Mike Pence

That's the funny thing about children. When they were around, you wanted peace and quiet. A mere moment to yourself. You felt absolutely desperate to go more than three minutes without hearing the word Moooooooom echoing throughout the house. To go to the bathroom or - if luck was really on your side - to take an uninterrupted shower. Yet, when they were absent, no matter how infrequently that happened, it felt as though someone had amputated your limb and left a stinging open wound in its place. And you craved them like a cold beer on a blistering summer day. — Emily Liebert

To heal would be to open the wound,examine it and forgive — Maeve Binchy

An open mind is like to an open wound,' growled Glokta. 'Vulnerable to poison. — Joe Abercrombie

Da Free John's phrase kept running through my mind: "Practice the wound of love ... practice the wound of love." Real love hurts; real love makes you totally vulnerable and open; real love will take you far beyond yourself; and therefore real love will devastate you. I kept thinking, if love does not shatter you, you do not know love ... — Ken Wilber

For instance, in one play the palace of Lord Hosokawa, in which was preserved the celebrated painting of Dharuma by Sesson, suddenly takes fire through the negligence of the samurai in charge. Resolved at all hazards to rescue the precious painting, he rushes into the burning building and seizes the kakemono, only to find all means of exit cut off by the flames. Thinking only of the picture, he slashes open his body with his sword, wraps his torn sleeve about the Sesson and plunges it into the gaping wound. The fire is at last extinguished. Among the smoking embers is found a half- consumed corpse, within which reposes the treasure uninjured by the fire. Horrible as such tales are, they illustrate the great value that we set upon a masterpiece, as well as the devotion of a trusted samurai. — Okakura Kakuzo

I cannot see the short, white curls
Upon the forehead of an Ox,
But what I see them dripping with
That poor thing's blood, and hear the ax;
When I see calves and lambs, I see
Them led to death; I see no bird
Or rabbit cross the open field
But what a sudden shot is heard;
A shout that tells me men aim true,
For death or wound, doth chill me through. — W.H. Davies

It follows that a tender heart that reaches for love and understanding is often the easiest to break. Hearts that are open and trusting are usually the ones that are wounded the most. This world is filed with men and woman who have rejected the love offered to them from a heart that is gentle and tender. Those strong, hard-shelled hearts that trust no one, hearts that give so little, hearts that demand love be constantly proved, hearts that are always calculating hearts that are always manipulating and self-serving, hearts that are afraid to risk are the ones that seldom get broken. They don't get wounded, because there is nothing to wound. They are too proud and self-centered to allow anyone else to make them suffer in any way. They go about breaking other hearts and trampling on the fragile souls who touch their lives, simply because they are so thick and dull at heart themselves, and they think everyone should be just as they are. — David Wilkerson

Pride is a wound, and vanity is the scab on it. One's life picks at the scab to open the wound again and again. In men, it seldom heals and often grows septic. — Michael Ayrton

Every time you rip the bandages off, you just open the wound up again. Every time he sees you, it's like tearing off the bandages. — Cassandra Clare

Language is a window into human nature, but it is also a fistula, an open wound through which we're exposed to an infectious world. — Steven Pinker

Please don't do this - don't do this to me. If anything happened to you - "
He looked at her with surprise. There was already a red stain on the white bandages that wrapped his chest, where his movements had pulled his wound open. "I ... "
"What?"
"I'm not used to you loving me," he said. — Cassandra Clare

A shaman is someone who has a wound that will not heal. He sits by the side of the road with his open wound exposed. — Rachel Naomi Remen

Word vulnerability is derived from the Latin word vulnerare, meaning "to wound." The definition includes "capable of being wounded" and "open to attack or damage." Merriam-Webster defines weakness as the inability to withstand attack or wounding. Just from a linguistic perspective, it's clear that these are very different concepts, and in fact, one could argue that weakness often stems from a lack of vulnerability - when we don't acknowledge how and where we're tender, we're more at risk of being hurt. — Brene Brown

Every time we make an assumption - for example, that we understand our spouse - we are exposing ourselves like an open wound. Assumptions and expectations that rely on someone or something else leave us vulnerable. At any moment, one of the uncountable possible contradictions can pop up and sprinkle salt on our assumptions, causing us to flinch and howl. — Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man's. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal. — Charles Dickens

The chilly mist settled down around them, sinking like midnight into his bones. His arm hurt, and his heart felt like an open wound in his chest. — Laura Kinsale

I'll take it. I'll take his words like a daring covenant, not knowing yet what's to come: there is no growth without change, no change without surrender, no surrender without wound - no abundance without breaking. Wounds are what break open the soul to plant the seeds of a deeper growth. — Ann Voskamp

He felt so tired, so weary of holding on with an iron grip to something he knew was slipping away.
"You can't make someone love you," he said.
Her hand stilled for a moment, the dirty tissue between her fingers. "True."
"Even if you love them so much you'd do anything, anything, for them." The truth of his words sank in. Speaking about it wasn't helping. It felt worse, like probing an open wound.
"Even if," his grandmasaid, nodding.
"Sometimes they pick another person to love when you've been right in front of them the whole time."
"It does happen." Her voice was soft.
"And then there's nothing left but to keep going as you were, pretending you never felt anything more than . . ."
"Friendship?" Her eyes met his and there was the faintest glimmer of tears.
"But I don't think I can have even that, anymore. — Mary Jane Hathaway

It's not surprising to me that in a country born of racial genocide, the issue of race is still an open wound on the American soul. We haven't dealt with it. — Michael Moore

Not everyone is okay with living like an open wound. But the thing about open wounds is that, well, you aren't ignoring it. You're healing; the fresh air can get to it. It's honest. You aren't hiding who you are. You aren't rotting. People can give you advice on how to heal without scarring badly. But on the other hand there are some people who'll feel uncomfortable around you. Some will even point and laugh. But we all have wounds. — Warsan Shire

People use each other
as a healing for their pain. They put each other
on their existential wound,
on the eye, on the cunt, on mouth and open hand.
They hold each other and won't let go. — Yehuda Amichai

You're going to have to take care of yourself," Karrin said quietly. "Over the next few weeks. Rest. Give yourself a chance to heal. Keep the wound on your leg clean. Get to a doctor and get that arm into a proper cast. I know you can't feel it, but it's important that
"
I stood, leaned over the bed, and kissed her on the mouth.
Her words dissolved into a soft sound that vibrated against my lips. Then her good arm slid around my neck, and there wasn't any sound at all. It was a long kiss. A slow kiss. A good one. I didn't draw away until it came to its end. I didn't open my eyes for a moment after.
" ... oh ... ," she said in a small voice. Her hand slid down my arm to lie upon mine.
"We do crazy things for love," I said quietly, and turned my hand over, fingers curling around hers. — Jim Butcher

You ooze joy and she is an open wound, shrill and wan, unfucked and unloved. — Caroline Kepnes

For the believer in divine creation, the open question of the Mystery of Being is like an open wound. It stings and gapes, and the believer cannot rest till it be healed up, closed up, smeared with the soothing balm of an answer, even if his doctrine be a sophisticated one like Aquinas's or that of the latest Liberal Protestant theologian. — Robert M. Price

The things we are attached to are no more than shadows of the past. However, we do not recognize that, and, as long as we hold on to them, they become part of the present and follow us around. Let's say there's a wound you suffered long ago. The wound closed and left a large or small scar. It's only a scar, and it doesn't interfere at all with you living a healthy life. But for a person who believes the wound is still open, even pain that has since left will return and the closed wound will become infected. — Ilchi Lee

i was an open wound — Maggie Stiefvater

But for now he was alone and hurt and broken on the ground, the man, gravely wounded. Worse, he knew himself a fool, knew himself a loser, knew himself too late, and defeated, ruined by his own hand, near to death.
It was the end and then this happened. The wound in his chest, red and burning, open like an eye, an ear, a mouth, began to glow.
It glowed and warmed until it embered him. Flowers closest to where he lay started to wilt in the heat of it. But inside the man, the heat changed into something else. The first thing he felt it become was courage and the next thing was desire.
They went through him, but with a roughness he'd never known. Then instead of in pain he was thirsty, but with a thirst he'd never known. The heat and the glow and the thirst combined and melted the man into someone he'd never been.
He heard a noise. It was the roar of water.
Up he got off the ground to go and sort himself out. — Ali Smith

Knowledge, then, can be dangerous because a rational mind may be compelled to use it in rational ways, allowing malevolent or careless speakers to commandeer our faculties against us. This makes the expressive power of language a mixed blessing: it lets us learn what we want to know, but it also lets us learn what we don't want to know. Language is not just a window into human nature but a fistula: an open wound through which our innards are exposed to an infectious world. It's not surprising that we expect people to sheathe their words in politeness and innuendo and other forms of doublespeak. — Steven Pinker

You are the salt of the earth." Some modern teachers seem to think our Lord said, You are the sugar of the earth, meaning that gentleness and winsomeness without curativeness is the ideal of the Christian. Our Lord's illustration of a Christian is salt, and salt is the most concentrated thing known. Salt preserves wholesomeness and prevents decay. It is a disadvantage to be salt. Think of the action of salt on a wound, and you will realize this. If you get salt into a wound, it hurts, and when God's children are amongst those who are "raw" towards God, their presence hurts. The person who is wrong with God is like an open wound, and when salt gets in it causes annoyance and distress and the person is spiteful and bitter. The disciples of Jesus in the present dispensation preserve society from corruption; the salt causes excessive irritation, which spells persecution for the saint. — Oswald Chambers

He was ragged around the edges, a walking open wound with psych issues galore. But he still had a beating heart. Thoughts, feelings, fears. He was still human, and someone should prove it to him. — Tonya Burrows

Love is an open wound that you hope never heals. — Tiffany Reisz

There was a big drive when I was at art school to make you aware of the economy of meaning - after all, this was still during the tail end of minimalism. Being responsible for everything you put in your picture, and being able to defend it. Keeping everything clear around you so you know what is operating. To open the wound and keep it clean. — Jane Campion

I was fading helplessly away with open eyes, staring straight at the ceiling. Finally I stuck my forefinger in my mouth and took to sucking on it. Something began stirring in my brain, some thought in there scrabbling to get out, a stark-staring mad idea: What if I get a bite? And without a moment's hesitation I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched my teeth together.
I jumped up. I was finally awake. A little blood trickled from my finger, and I licked it off as it came. It didn't hurt, the wound was nothing really, but I was at once brought back to my sense. I shook my head, went over to the window and found a rag for the wound. While I was fiddling with this, my eyes filled with water
I wept softly to myself. The skinny lacerated finger looked so sad. God in heaven, to what extremity I had come! — Knut Hamsun

Nightingale
Did I wound you, mutilate. Take away your voice. Did I cut something from you. Leave you locked in silence?
This is what you do: you sing. Every part of you. Your locks of hair sing, your eyes, your hands, your smile. If I listen closely I can even hear your blood.
Was I the one that took that away?
Go down to the water where we used to swim. Stand under the sky at dawn when the sky is streaked with blood. Open your mouth and shout our secret to the waves. The ocean will be your voice. You won't have to carry anything alone. Little Sister, my Spring, April. Little nightingale. Sant at the edge of the water. Your voice will come back to you. Maybe. If I am silent. — Francesca Lia Block

you plough into me with two fingers and 1 am mostly shocked, it feels like rubber against an open wound, i do not like it. you begin pushing faster and faster, but i feel nothing, you search my face for a reaction so i begin acting like the naked women in the videos you watch when you think no one's looking, i imitate their moans, hollow and hungry, you ask if it feels good and i say yes so quickly it sounds rehearsed, but the acting, you do not notice. — Rupi Kaur

You were a stray cat, strutting so free and full of pride. But I could see your open wound. And without really thinking I just chalked it up to another cool thing about you. I never realized how much you hurt. — Ai Yazawa

The circle of the return to birth can only remain open, but this is a chance, a sign of life, and a wound. — Jacques Derrida

He glanced up at her and somehow he'd come back to himself, contained all that terrible sorrow and anger and fear, enough to make ten strong men fall down like babes. Maximus held it all inside of him and straightened his shoulders, his chin level, and Artemis couldn't understand it - where he got the strength to hide that awful, bloody wound in his soul - but she admired him for it.
Admired him and loved him.
She felt an answering wound open within her own soul, a kind of faint reflection of all the pain he'd endured, just because she cared for him. — Elizabeth Hoyt

For some, excavating the past isn't an adventure, it's more akin to tearing a Band-Aid off an open wound. — Raquel Cepeda

I think you learn to live with the pain of miscarrying. The open wound heals and becomes a scar. Not as raw, but always there. A part of you- your heart. — Ellen DuBois

Don't die on me," she whispered when the clock struck midnight and he still had not moved. "It's only a little shoulder wound. Goddess, George-don't die on me."
His eyes flickered open and he smiled. "I didn't know you cared," he whispered. "And why insult me? I won't die for a wee nick like this; I've had worse in my day."
Alanna wiped her wet cheeks. "Of course I care, you unprincipled pickpocket!" she whispered. "Of course I care. — Tamora Pierce

He thought he would become accustomed to the idea, not yet understanding that it is useless to become accustomed to the loss of a father, for it will never happen a second time: might as well leave the wound open. — Umberto Eco

Nothing feels quite so good as pouring salt in an open wound. — Tammy Blackwell

Most women do not have a relationship with God, as they are either unwilling to have one or unaware of how to have one, so they choose a human partner."
"It's not about gender or age, nor even social conditioning, religious belief or other external preferences. To surrender as Love - in a feminine way - is to become vulnerable, fragile, soft, sincere, open hearted, and "wound-able" as a choice to the alternative of living miserably inside walls and masks, hiding from pain and Joy. — Nityananda Das

Feeling quiet and empty, he told himself that he would be all right tomorrow. He would forgive himself the weakness of this night, it was like the tears one is permitted at a funeral, and then one learns how to live with an open wound or with a crippled factory. — Ayn Rand

And because she loved him so much, because she would always love him, she forced herself to say what needed to be said, although the words tore open every old bleeding wound she'd hidden away so deep within her. "And I would do it again," she whispered, "because you are who you are, while I am . . . what I am." His — C.S. Harris

An open mind is like to an open wound. Vulnerable to poison. Liable to fester. Apt to give its owner only pain. — Joe Abercrombie

My hunger and desperation, being an actor, an out of work actor - my memory of that is as fresh as an open wound. — Griffin Dunne

Where is Sin's plaid? (Lochlan)
Plaid cloth is for people of true Scots blood, Lochlan. They are not for half-blooded Sassenachs. (Aisleen)
(He had found Sin later that day, alone in their room. Sin had been sitting in the middle of the floor with his arm cut open while he let blood trail from the wound into a bowl.)
What are you doing? (Lochlan)
I'm trying to get rid of the English blood in me, but it doesn't look any different than yours. How can I make it go away when I can't find the difference? (Sin) — Kinley MacGregor