Wound Up Quotes & Sayings

When I was a child my mother said to me, 'If you become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you become a monk, you'll be the pope.' Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso. — Pablo Picasso

So, as Lymond strode out and stopped, rigid and white by the doorpost, Sybilla set eyes on Francis, the son of her heart; and so Francis Crawford, after four years of unharnessed power, came face to face at last with his mother.

And Kate, falling upon the door and looking up at her self-contained relative by marriage, saw his face torn apart and left, raw as a wound without features; only pain and shock and despair and appalled recognition, all the more terrible for being perfectly voiceless. — Dorothy Dunnett

From now on there is no longer any development immanent to art. The times have passed for history of art with a logical sense. There is no longer even any consistency in absurdities; the development has been wound up, and what comes now already exists: the syncretism of a muddle of all styles and possibilities, post-history. — Arnold Gehlen

And metaphors like cats behind your smile,
Each one wound up to purr,
each one a pride,
Each one a fine gold beast you've hid inside ( ... ) — Ray Bradbury

True love is mixed up with birdlike squabbles, in which the disputants wound each other to the quick; but a quarrel without animus is, on the contrary, apiece of flattery to the dupe's conceit. — Honore De Balzac

On the Monday morning, with the rain still pouring down, Ross went in to see Drake, who was sitting up in bed and, apart from the bandaged shoulder and the plastered fingers, was now looking more substantial than Dwight. Perhaps this too was not surprising. At nineteen, if a man does not die from a wound, he quickly gets better. 'So,' said Ross. 'I thought I might have had to take your sister home some bad news.' Drake smiled. All the damned family, Ross thought, had this wonderful smile. They had certainly not inherited it from their father. 'No, sur. I — Winston Graham

Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers's Centre Georges Pompidou of 1971-1977 - the true prototype of the modern museum as popular architectural spectacle - wound up costing so much more than planned that the French government solved the shortfall by cutting support for several regional museums. — Martin Filler

I went into rehab to save my marriage, but I wound up saving myself. — Michael Douglas

A conservative young man has wound up his life before it was unreeled. We expect old men to be conservative but when a nation's young men are so, its funeral bell is already rung. — Henry Ward Beecher

When she'd finished, she cut the thread with a pair of scissors, patted the wound once more and stepped back. "Better."
"No bandage?"
She shook her head. "No bandage. Need air."
"All right. I guess you're the doctor." He grabbed her hand and pulled her onto his lap. Even in the midst of inflicting pain she'd aroused his lust. "Don't I get a reward for being a good patient?"
"I don't understand." She delivered the all-purpose phrase he'd taught her.
"Reward. A kiss."
The grooves in her cheeks flashed as her lips turned up. "Yes, you need a kiss." And she bent her head to give him one. — Bonnie Dee

I tried to say something cool, wound up stammering something like, "WANNA YOU WANNA WEENIE ME?" The end kind of trailed off in a shrill, choking warble. — David Wong

[Anna] In February, I woke up from a nap. A bouquet of flowers gathered from the various bushes and shrubs scattered around the island lay on the blanket beside me, a small length of rope wound around their stems.
I found T.J. down at the shore. "Someone's been checking the calendar."
He grinned. "I didn't want to miss Valentine's Day."
I kissed him. "You're sweet to me."
Pulling me closer, he said, "It's not hard, Anna."
I stared into T.J.'s eyes, and he started to sway. My arms went around his neck and we danced, moving in a circle, the sand soft and warm under our feet.
"You don't need music, do you?"
"No," T.J. said. "But I do need you. — Tracey Garvis-Graves

Who then can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the same wound himself. — Thomas Jefferson

How is Eric?'
'Very tightly wound. Plus, a lot of stuff happened that he'll tell you about.'
'Thanks for the warning. I'll go to the house now. You're my favorite breather.'
'Oh. Well ... great.'
She hung up. — Charlaine Harris

You don't get real reform by pandering to every special interest. With cap and trade we wound up with a bill that didn't accomplish much, was enormously complicated and expensive. — Brian Baird

When I was a teenager, her habit of cramming a bunch of words into one line, plus the way her lyrics tend to start with small particularities and ripple outward into universal truths, lodged itself into my ears and wound up directly on my pages. — Meghan Daum

My only thought is that I am not going to end up truly dead this time in Raffe's arms. I am not going to be one more wound on his soul. — Susan Ee

Prophet was still half buzzed, although he was waning when they got back to the apartment . . . but Tommy was quiet. At first, Prophet thought he might be tired, which would be understandable . . . but it was more than that. Tommy was restless. He put his hand on Tommy's knee, which had been bouncing a hundred miles an hour as he sat on the couch, like he was waiting for . . . something. "Sorry," Tommy said sheepishly. "That wound me up more than I realized." Prophet — S.E. Jakes

IT'S NO FUN WATCHING PEOPLE WOUND
THEMSELVES SO THAT THEY CAN HOLE UP,
NURSE THEMSELVES BACK TO HEALTH,
AND REPEAT THE CYCLE.
THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT ELSE TO DO. — Jenny Holzer

Wherever you go, there you are. Whatever you wind up doing, that's what you've wound up doing. Whatever you are thinking right now, that's what's on your mind. Whatever has happened to you, it has already happened. The important question is, "how are you going to handle it?"
... Like it or not, this moment is all we really have to work with. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

The poems turned up everywhere. Soon the lady of the house went into fits of hysteria when she kept discovering this attack of poetry in the most unlikely places - under doors, in the mother-of-pearl latticework of windowpanes, under jars, stones, flowerpots, loaves of bread, and even delivered by homing pigeons, around whose rose-coloured claws the young matador lovingly wound poems in which he declaimed his love in the quaint language whose provenance was unknown to the world and still evoked images of the uninterrupted empires of Visigiths, the unbridled lust of the Huns and the intransigence of the Berbers. The young maiden recognized only a few words, but to her they were fragments of a secret music: zirimiri, fine rain; senaremaztac, husband and wife; nik behar diren guzian eginen ditut, I shall do everything necessary ... — Eric Gamalinda

I wound up writing a review that asserted her greatness but also said that this was not her career album, and that she could and would do even better than this.

I was in Atlanta, late at night, leaving a piano bar (don't ask), when my cell phone rang and I distractedly picked it up.

'Hello?'

'Peter Cooper?'

The words came out as one: 'Petercooper?'

'Yes.'

'You better get your ass over here right now.'

'Who is this?'

'Petercooper, it's Leeannwomack. Where the hell are you?'

'I'm in Atlanta?'

'Why?'

That one was hard to answer. I paused to ponder.

'Doesn't matter. Get your sorry ass over here right now.'

'I can't. I'm in Atlanta.'

'Well, get in your car and drive to Nashville. 'Cause I'm gonna give you three swift kicks to the groin. — Peter Cooper

She collapsed at the bottom of the trail, at the edge of the ghost town. Dekka sat on Edilio and pressed down on the wound. The force of the blood was weaker now. She could almost hold the blood back now, not a good thing, no, because it meant he was almost finished, his brave heart almost done beating.
Dekka looked up straight into the glittering eyes of a coyote. She could sense the others around her, closing in. Wary but sensing that a fresh meal was close at hand. — Michael Grant

If your opponent is playing several shots in vain attempts to extricate himself from a bunker, do not stand near him and audibly count his strokes. It would be justifiable homicide if he wound up his pitiable exhibition by applying his niblick to your head. — Harry Vardon

Good God!" Avery gasped at the bloody wound on Lucien's head and Cedric's grief-stricken expression.
"You were dueling?" Sir John growled. "Fools."
He relieved Lawrence of Lucien's feet to help carry the unconscious Marquess up the stairs to an empty bedroom.
The second Lucien was on the bed Lady Rochester burst into the room, fire in her eyes. "Is he dead?" she asked, panic creeping into her.
"The blow glanced his skull," Lawrence said. "He may still live."
"May? Oh, he will not die. I want to kill him myself and he will not deny me that."

-His Wicked Seduction — Lauren Smith

Let's say," Judd whispered, "that some fuck was to show up here and cause trouble. Let's say the piece of shit that put those bruises on your face shows up here, do you know what would happen?"
As I shook my head, Judd laid over the covers I rested under. "I would shoot the fucker. No warning shot. No flesh wound. One shot and it would be over. Do you understand? — Bijou Hunter

The soul aches as much as the body.there are days when all the scars , all the old and long forgotten hurts" lights up", just like old injuries before winter or bones hurt from blows you have collected in a long life and only forgotten for a short time. in those days you are bad tempered and absorbed in yourself, in your soul whose wound reopened only to remind you that nothing is lost,nothing vanishes, least of all pains and bad memories.they just whither away for a while, withdraw into an unknown depth, just like they will this time and you will put them behind you, until the next time. — Alija Izetbegovic

He went crazy over Greek mythology, which is where I got my name.

They compromised on it, because my mom loved Shakespeare, and I ended up called Theseus Cassio. Theseus for the slayer of the Minotaur, and Cassio for Othello's doomed lieutenant. I think it sounds straight-up stupid. Theseus Cassio Lowood. Everyone just calls me Cas. I suppose I should be glad--my dad also loved Norse mythology, so I might have wound up being called Thor, which would have been basically unbearable. — Kendare Blake

She'd hardly known where she was going while the gloriella tore through her; all she'd known was that she had to get someplace safe. And somehow, she had wound up exactly where she knew she'd be safest. — Sarah J. Maas

Then she took my hand and touched it to the wound beside her eye. I caressed the half-inch scar. As I did so, the waves of her consciousness pulsed through my fingertips and into me - a delicate resonance of longing. Probably someone should take this girl in his arms and hold her tight, I thought. Probably someone other than me. Someone qualified to give her something. Goodbye, Mr. Wind-Up Bird. See you again sometime. — Haruki Murakami

In Star City, where Yuri Gagarin trained, I worked as NASA's Director of Operations in Russia from 2001 to 2003, and I learned to live the local life, really embrace it, in order to understand the people I worked with and be more effective in the role. That experience came in handy when, a decade later, I wound up living and working closely with Russian cosmonauts. Not only did I speak their language, but I knew something about myself: it takes me longer to understand when the culture is not my own, so I have to consciously resist the urge to hurry things along and push my own expectations on others. — Chris Hadfield

I remember still how full of bad magic all those spearpoints to be put on the ends of rifles seemed to be. One was like a sharpened curtain rod. Another was triangular in cross-section, so that the wound it made wouldn't close up again and keep the blood and guts from falling out. Another one had sawteeth - so it could work its way through bone, I guess. I can remember thinking that war was so horrible that, at last, thank goodness, nobody could ever be fooled by romantic pictures and fiction and history into marching to war again.
Nowadays, of course, you can buy a machine gun with a plastic bayonet for your little kid at the nearest toy boutique. — Kurt Vonnegut

You smell good to me," he said, his voice deeper than before, like a warm autumn night, the vowels especially round. Not French. Italian? Spanish? He must have come with one of the other guests-one of the other guests who had wretched judgment when hiring stable hands. "I-" "And, por Deus," he said upon a catch in his throat, his eyes hard upon her mouth, "you are lovely." The rutting urge must have overcome him. The only male creature that had ever considered her lovely was Beast, and that was because she sometimes smelled like bacon. She must distract him. "I can help with that bruise on your brow," she said, struggling against panic. "Can you?" He seemed bemused. Jars to the head could scramble the brain. "It's starting to swell. It will leave a painful wound that could fester. Let me up and I'll ask the housekeeper for-" His mouth came down on hers without further warning. Not hard or violently or forcefully. But fully, with complete contact.

-Vitor & Ravenna — Katharine Ashe

My exuberance breaks things, breaks me. It marches me up to people and elicits from me declarations of love, if only to give me the satisfaction of disappointment, to know that I am in love. I am forever building up this edifice of love and happiness, which would get to be as big as the world, or bigger, if it weren't for the storms, eruptions, convulsions, that tear it all down again. When any of it comes down, it all comes down. Although these catastrophic failures deeply wound me, still I am grateful for the opportunity to rebuild, and to renew my trust with the world. I do everything on the scale of the world, as the only thing commensurate to my happiness. — Michael Cisco

I'm never comfortable at theatre opening nights. If it's my own production I'm too wound up to be able to enjoy the performance and too wary to enjoy the event as a social occasion. — Richard Eyre

I was hungry and went out for a bite, ran into a chum with a bottle of rum and we wound up drinking all night. — Jimmy Buffett

And I wound up in New Orleans for all those years and it was a great place, really a catalyst creatively. — Jimmy Buffett

...you think cabling is unnatural--that's what your arguments all come down to. But it's not. Not between people that really fit. Maya, do you have any idea how unlikely it is that two structures as complex as minds could be joined like that? It's like picking up two stones at random and discovering that they fit together perfectly. It isn't a coincidence, it can't be. They fit together so easily--like reuniting something that should never have been broken, filling in some ancient wound... — Raphael Carter

If I hadn't made it as an actor, I might have wound up a hood ... — Steve McQueen

Alex's experience of real family - of blood relations - was more like having a lot of people who had all wound up on the same mailing list without knowing quite why they signed up for it. — James S.A. Corey

She carried a scabbedover wound on her hip where her mate had bitten her two weeks before somewhere in the mountains of Sonora. He'd bitten her because she would not leave him. Standing with one forefoot in the jaws of a steeltrap and snarling at her to drive her off where she lay just beyond the reach of the chain. She'd flattened her ears and whined and she would not leave. In the morning they came on horses. She watched from a slope a hundred yards away as he stood up to meet them. — Cormac McCarthy

Came Honker's trip to Slice City along about then: our sax-man got a neck all full of the sharpest kind of steel. So we were out one horn. And you could tell: we played a little bit too rough, and the head-arrangements Collins and His Crew grew up to, they needed Honker's grease in the worst way. But we'd been together for five years or more, and a new man just didn't play somehow. We were this one solid thing, like a unit, and somebody had cut off a piece of us and we couldn't grow the piece back so we just tried to get along anyway, bleeding every night, bleeding from that wound. ("Black Country") — Charles Beaumont

I had size 12 feet when I was 10, so I thought I was going to be 6 8. My goal was to be able to dunk a basket. I wound up being 6 1 with size 14 feet. I got the raw end of the deal. — Bradley Cooper

The door closed behind them. They climbed out of the earth; and, still climbing, rose above it. They were in the rainbow. Far abroad, over ocean and land, they could see through its transparent walls the earth beneath their feet. Stairs beside stairs wound up together, and beautiful beings of all ages climbed along with them.
They knew that they were going up to the country whence the shadows fall.
And by this time I think they must have got there. — George MacDonald

I always wanted to be an anchorman, but after college I wound up working behind the scenes at CBS News for 10 years. — Andy Cohen

There is the Watchmaker Theory that God wound up the universe and let it tick. That may be. or it may be that he takes a hand in things from time to time. But whatever it is, I am sure that there is something out there. — Stephen King

The two of them carefully stepped around the crime scene, picking up Nick's arms, legs and organs, and brought them back to his head. They placed his extremities into position, and then pieced in the gorier bits, assembling a gruesome jigsaw puzzle. In a few moments, most of Nick's body was in place.
The healing process took about twenty minutes. Elphaba and John stood spellbound as they watched a bloody collection of body parts reintegrate into a human form.
As Nick's sinews, nerves, and muscle knit back into place, the gaping wound in Esperto's body also closed, completing a few minutes before Nick's healing. The panther form quickly shrank back to housecat just as Nick sat up. Esperto jumped in his lap and licked the remnants of blood off his face.
"Thank you Esperto," Nick said. He looked at Elphaba and John. "Well, that could have gone better. — Abramelin Keldor

You know, I came to realize that the person that once treated me worse than anybody else, is the person that treats me the best. That the person that I feared more than anyone else has wound up being the person that I trust more than anyone else. That the person I once hated the most has wound up being the person that I've kind of fallen in love with. There's no way in this world i'm going to be disappointed in the person that i'm pretty much in awe of. — J.F. Smith

And that's what we'll do every day. If you or your friends spray-paint obscenities on our walls, we'll scrub them off, and the people will come. if you break our windows, we'll fix them, and the people will come. If you hurt us, we'll wash off the blood, slap on some bandages and the people will come ... any wound you inflict, we'll stitch up. We're not going to stop, no matter what you do. This work is too important. Too many lives are at stake. — Robert J. Wiersema

Our Soul Allies light the fire in those initial visits, but it's up to us to keep it burning. — S. Kelley Harrell

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

The Pop art I wound up doing came to me purely from 'Mad' comics. I loved the idea of doing fun stuff. I met an art dealer who wanted to show the work - that was in January 1962 - and that was the beginning for me. — Peter Saul

Islington smiled superciliously. "Lucifer?" It said. "Lucifer was an idiot. It wound up lord and master of nothing at all." The marquis grinned. "And you wound up lord and master of two thugs and a roomful of candles? — Neil Gaiman

She wondered what on earth about liking someone could possibly have him wound up to such a pitch of anxiety. You're not gay, are you? — Cassandra Clare

Jesus reveals a God who does not demand but who gives; who does not oppress but who raises up; who does not wound but who heals; who does not condemn but forgives. — Brennan Manning

Her whole body was wound up tight. She was ready to storm the palace herself - an army of one. — Marissa Meyer

The simultaneous scream sounded from teh twins. Borth clasped their hands over their mouths, their eyes wide with horror. Azalea followed their gaze.
There, in patches of light, scratched-up Fairweller held a weeping clover in his arms, cradling her head against his shoulder. He murmured into her ear.
Delphinium screamed.
"Oh, Clover, how could you?" said Eve.
"Is he a good kisser?" said Hollyhock.
The King had no words as he strode to them. In an instant he had torn Fairweller away from Clover, wound up, and boxed Fairweller straight in the face.
Fairweller stumbled backward and fell to the floor, glass crunching beneath him.
"You may fill out your resignation paperwork tomorrow," said the King. "ExPrime Minister Fairweller! — Heather Dixon

Every time a man is begotten and born, the clock of human life is wound up anew to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement and measure by measure, with insignificant variations. — Arthur Schopenhauer

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

Then hearing Elvis today made me think I didn't have a lot to bitch about, but when I said that to Mr. Nak after group, he said, Don't get to thinkin' just because some other guy's sinkin' in horse manure, the stuff up around your neck is chocolate puddin'. A wound is a wound, young Brewster. Remember that. Don't diminish the pain of your own just because you see some other gut-shot cowboy bleedin' to death. — Chris Crutcher

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

As all clocks need winding, so all human brains and bodies need to be wound up by sleeping. — Julia McNair Wright

We weren't going anywhere, Nick said with a smile. He was trying to sound charming, but instead wound up sounding heavily sedated. — Neal Shusterman

In lieu of descending to follow the Via Aurelia where it wound down a few miles off the coast, by Santa Maranella and Santa Severa and mediaeval Palo, and the volcanic soil and the steep ravines by Cervetri, where the long avenues of cliff-sepulchres are all that remain to show the site of Caere, and gaining so the mouth of Tiber to ascend the stream in any boat that he might find by Fiumicino, he still struck across the country by cattle-tracks known alone to himself and wild men like him, and chose to leave the Maccarese morasses untrodden in his rear, and had followed the course of the Arrone River as far as the high cliffs up by forsaken Galera. — Ouida

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

For Lao-tzu's Taoism is the philosophical equivalent of jujitsu, or judo, which means the way of gentleness. Its basis is the principle of Tao, which may be translated the Way of Nature. But in the Chinese language the word which we render as "nature" has a special meaning not found in its English equivalent. Translated literally, it means "self-so." For to the Chinese, nature is what works and moves by itself without having to be shoved about, wound up, or controlled by conscious effort. Your heart beats "self-so," and, if you would give it half a chance, your mind can function "self-so" - though most of us are much too afraid of ourselves to try the experiment. — Alan W. Watts

Guess what? When it comes right down to it, wherever you go, there you are. Whatever you wind up doing, that's what you've wound up doing. Whatever you are thinking right now, that's what's on your mind. Whatever has happened to you, it has already happened. The important question is, how are you going to handle it? In other words, Now what? — Jon Kabat-Zinn

Being loved continuously when you believe that you're unlovable is like throwing salt on a wound. It stings like acid. You want it desperately, instinctively knowing deep down you were wired to need it. But the more love given, the more unworthy of love you behave, constantly trying to find ways to make up for the void and pain that reside like a monster inside your heart. — Christa Black

He held his hand up to his face and licked the wound. Blood. Old-tasting and rich like the sediment of a river. He looked at Jimmy. The blood on their faces meant they were part of the same stream now, bobbing in the current, borne forward effortlessly under the slowly twirling dome of the sky. — Richard Wagamese

How often have I met and disliked writers whose books I love; and conversely, hated the books and then wound up liking the writer? Too often. — Lev Grossman

At one point, I had over 800 employees, and I always paid all health care for my people - including a man who was my assistant who got HIV. I wound up paying his medical bills, which went into the hundreds of thousands. I'm not making myself out to be a saint. I did the right thing. — Jerry Della Femina

I had a New Year's kiss once. But it was like, 'Let's start the year off together,' and then we wound up breaking up the night after! — Joe Jonas

Amos had wanted to be a poet when he was a boy. He'd wound up a scientist. Danny was a poet, who somehow happened to have become a scientist. — Michael Lewis

No matter what ailed you, you went to see the barber surgeon who wound up cupping you, bleeding you, purging you. And, oh yes, if you wanted, he would give you a haircut and pull your tooth while he was at it. — Abraham Verghese

That had been her plan, he decided. The devious witch. She'd planted the seed in his brain, stirred up his loins, as he was only a man, after all, and now she could torment him just by being in the same vicinity.
Well, two could play this game.
Rather than waiting for Darcy to pick up the orders, he carried them out himself. Just to show Brenna O'Toole that she didn't trouble him in the least.
The perverse creature didn't even glance his way as he swung into the pub and wound his way through the crowd to the tables. — Nora Roberts

What do you do when you're wound up?' she asked. 'Do you play that drum?'. 'No,' said the child. 'We used to dance.' 'But now we walk,' said the father. 'And behind us an enemy walks faster.' 'That's life,' said Euterpe. — Russell Hoban

Clunk all wound up and ready to go! — RaeLynn

In this world, is the destiny of mankind controlled by some transcendental entity or law? Is it like the hand of God hovering above? At least it is true that man has no control, even over his own will. Man takes up the sword in order to shield the small wound in his heart sustained in a far-off time beyond remembrance. Man wields the sword so that he may die smiling in some far-off time beyond perception. — Kentaro Miura

I was feeling single, seeing double, wound up in a whole lotta trouble. — Emmylou Harris

We come unbidden into this life, and if we are lucky we find a purpose beyond starvation, misery, and early death which, lest we forget, is the common lot. I grew up and I found my purpose and it was to become a physician. My intent wasn't to save the world as much as to heal myself. Few doctors will admit this, certainly not young ones, but subconsciously, in entering the profession, we must believe that ministering to others will heal our woundedness. And it can. but it can also deepen the wound. — Abraham Verghese

Every artist was haunted by lies. Every artist fought to find truths. Every artist failed. Some turned back, embracing those comforting lies. Others took their own lives in despair. Still others drank themselves into the barrow, or poisoned everyone who drew near enough to touch, to wound. Some simply gave up, and wasted away in obscurity. A few discovered their own mediocrity, and this was the cruellest discovery of all. None found their way to the truths. — Steven Erikson

The word "paracleta" means "the one who answers the cry." It is not possible to receive the Spirit unless we cry out, and unless that cry surges up from the consciousness of our own wound, our pain, and our brokenness. — Jean Vanier

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief. — Franz Kafka

Have you ever sat on a window seat, in the train of your memories while it's raining heavily? Rain has this ridiculous power of waking up all the angels and demons inside us at once, doesn't it? All of a sudden there is a war inside us, between both the sides. We can do nothing but clench our fists and watch our train derail and take a path we have never come across before. All we know at that point of time is that we are going to crash somewhere. Either our demons win or the angels, we are going to get wounded somewhere. — Akshay Vasu

Art can model the more difficult dynamic of transfiguring one's life, but at some point the dynamic reverses itself: life models, or forces, the existential crisis by which art - great art - is fully experienced. There is a fluidity between art and life, then, in the same way that there is, in the best lives, a fluidity between mind and matter, self and soul, life and death. Experience seems to stream clearly through some lives, rather than getting slowed and clogged up in the drift-waste of ego, or stagnating in little inlets of despair, envy, rage. It has to do with seizing and releasing as a single gesture. It has to do with standing in relation to life and death ... owning an emptiness that, because you have claimed it, has become a source of light, wearing your wound that, like a ramshackle house on some high exposed hill, sings with the hard wind that is steadily destroying it. — Christian Wiman

Each night the sun sank right in our eyes along the sea, making an undulating glittering pathway, a golden track charted on the surface of the ocean which our ship followed unswervingly until the sun dipped below the edge of the horizon, and the pathway ran ahead of us faster than we could steam and slipped over the edge of the skyline - as if the sun had been a golden ball and had wound up its thread of gold too quickly for us to follow. — Lawrence Beesley

Now listen to me. I will not walk on one-way streets any longer. Your wound is my wound, (though you don't know that mine is yours), and I do what I can, but the well will run dry. You will use us up. There are women whose first stretching across borders was into your lives. When they discover how you make use of their compassion, they will turn away heartsick, stricken, withering in the freshness of their hope. There are women who were leaders, who worked night and day, defeated not by foreign policy, but by the sexual politics of solidarity, bitter now, unable to work anywhere near you. How dare you speak of the New Woman! We are your richest resource besides your endurance, and you use us like rags to wrap around your pain. — Aurora Levins Morales

You were great tonight, helping with Candice's wound and the funeral ceremony for Chaz ... such as it was."
"I only did what needed doing, and as for your friend's funeral, it was a beautiful good-bye you all gave him," she murmured. "Simple but pure. You honored him well, Kellan."
The phrase she used - one reserved for the solemnest occasions in Breed traditions - touched him in a way he couldn't express. Instead, he tipped her chin up on the edge of his hand and kissed her. Not the hungered kind of kiss that they'd been sharing each time they'd connected since her arrival back in his life a few days ago but a kiss shaped by tender caring and gratitude, by profound respect ... and, yes, love.
He loved this woman.
His woman. — Lara Adrian

In the '50s and '60s, a family's first child went into the priesthood, the second went into the military, and the third child was an idiot and wound up in advertising. — Jerry Della Femina

I initially got a job at Disneyland through a friend who was working there. He said, 'You would make a great princess there,' and that I should audition. So I just went on a whim to audition, and I wound up getting a job as Belle, from 'Beauty and the Beast,' at Disneyland. I did that for about a year and a half. — Sarah Butler

If I'm sending emails, and I get all wound up and stressed and don't know what to do with myself for 20 minutes, I just go soak in hot water and lie there, thinking, 'What should I do?' So it's meditative. — Tom Ford

Fresh proof of the risks you run in writing about players, and of the advisability of not standing to leeward of their self-esteem when one has had the misfortune to wound it in the slightest degree. When you criticize a singer, you do not have his colleagues up in arms against you. Indeed, they generally feel that you have not been severe enough. But the virtuoso instrumentalist who belongs to a well-known musical organization always claims that in criticizing him you are 'insulting' the whole institution, and though the contention is absurd he sometimes succeeds in making the other players believe it. — Hector Berlioz

I felt a clot in my throat, something that wouldn't let language come ... And there is also a dream I have over and over again, of opening up my mouth and finding my tongue studded with broken glass, so every word is a wound. — Lauren Slater

Sometimes a cloudless swatch of sky would blow past the moon, and Pella could see the outline of Mike's face in a slightly sharper relief. It was strange the way he loved her: a sidelong and almost casual love, as if loving her were simply a matter of course, too natural to mention. Like their first meeting on the steps of the gym, when he'd hardly so much as glanced at her. With David and every guy before David, what passed for love had always been eye to eye, nose to nose; she felt watched, observed, like the prize at the zoo, and she wound up pacing, preening, watching back, to fit the part. Whereas Mike was always beside her. She would stand at the kitchen window and look out at the quad, at the Melville statue and beyond that the beach and the rolling lake, and realize that Make, for however long, had been standing beside her, staring at the same thing. — Chad Harbach

And I met Paul Simms while I was making 'It's Pat', and he later wound up casting me in 'NewsRadio.' — Dave Foley

Ralston didn't care. He turned on his brother as the surgeon knelt next to him and inspected the wound. "She could have been killed!"
And what about you?" This time, it was Callie who spoke, her own pent-up energy releasing in anger, and the men turned as one to look at her, surprised that she and found her voice. "What about you and your idiotic pland to somehow restore my honor by playing guns out in the middle of nowhere with OXFORD?" She said the baron's name in disdain. "Like children? Of all the ridiculous, unnecessary, thoughtless, MALE things to do ... who even FIGHTS duels anymore?! — Sarah MacLean

The spring is wound up tight. It will uncoil of itself. That is what is so convenient in tragedy. The least little turn of the wrist will do the job . . . The rest is automatic. You don't need to lift a finger. The machine is in perfect order; it has been oiled ever since time began, and it runs without friction . . . Tragedy is clean, it is restful, it is flawless . . . In a tragedy, nothing is in doubt and everyone's destiny is known. That makes for tranquility . . . Tragedy is restful; and the reason is that hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it. There isn't any hope. You're trapped. — Jean Anouilh

Take your grandpappy--goin' out there is about the only recreation he gets. He'll go out some rainy night with his nighties flappin' around his legs, and like as not when you come out in the mornin' you'll find him prone in the mud, or maybe skidded off one of them curves and wound up in the corn crib. — Charles Sale

Sparky Lyle threw me a slider, and it wound up in the seats. We won, and it was a memorable moment. — Richie Allen

The music had ceased. Alex walked over to the gramophone, wound it up again, and put on more blues, a woman singing this time, gay and sad at once, like a stranded angel who had traded holiness for humanity but remembered what it used to be like to know God. — Barbara Hambly