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Quote by Jesmyn Ward

“Growing up out here in the country taught me things. Taught me that after the first fat flush of life, time eats away at things: it rusts machinery, it matures animals to become hairless and featherless, and it withers plants [...] since Mama got sick, I learned pain can do that too. Can eat a person until there’s nothing but bone and skin and a thin layer of blood left. How it can eat your insides and swell you in wrong ways.”

Quote by Jesmyn Ward

Work

Sing, Unburied, Sing

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Author

Jesmyn Ward
Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward is an American novelist known for her profound portrayals of life in the American South. Her works delve into complex themes such as race, class, and social justice, earning her widespread acclaim. more

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“Talking about painful events doesn’t necessarily establish community – often quite the contrary. Families and organizations may reject members who air the dirty laundry; friends and family can lost patience with people who get stuck in their grief or hurt. This is one reason why trauma victims often withdraw and why their stories become rote narratives, edited into a form least likely to provoke rejection.”

“Pensava a una cosa che non aveva pensata da molto tempo, poiché aveva sofferto assai: che il dolore non si può togliere, non si deve, perché è il nostro guardiano. Spesso è un guardiano sciocco, perché è inflessibile, è fedele alla sua consegna con ostinazione maniaca, e non si stanca mai, mentre tutte le altre sensazioni si stancano, si logorano, specialmente quelle piacevoli. Ma non si può sopprimerlo, farlo tacere, perché è tutt'uno con la vita, ne è il custode.”

“Nobody would commit suicide if the pain of being inside herself, the agony of the sleepless, tortured hours spent watching the world get smaller and uglier, were bearable or could be relieved by other people telling her how they wanted her to feel. A depressed person is selfish because her self, the very core of who she is, will not leave her alone, and she can no more stop thinking about this self and how to escape it than a prisoner held captive by a sadistic serial killer can forget about the person who comes in to torture her everyday. Her body is brutalized by her mind. It hurts to breathe, eat, walk, think. The gross maneuverings of her limbs are so overwhelming, so wearying, that the fine muscle movements or quickness of wit necessary to write, to actually say something, are completely out of the question.”

“When the power of the shift rips the human body apart and transforms it into its new shape, there lives a second, less than a second, a mere shimmer of time when the mind is without a home, no body to call its own. Existence is painless in there, nothing but formlessness beyond understanding. A secret place, it contains nothing but the essence of self, a lost self. In the fire of pain, Colton found a whisper of that place, its ghost, its echo, and from that echo he withdrew a thread of deepest black.”