suffering

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“Each of us has his own rhythm of suffering.”

Roland Barthes

source: entry dated July 18, 1978, in Mourning Diary, translated by Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 2010), 162.

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category: mourning, rhythm, suffering

medium: diary

notes: On index cards, Roland Barthes starting keeping a mourning diary the day after his mother died in October 1977.

“The Buddhist philosopher Thich Nhat Hanh deals bluntly with the first reason you might be having trouble: You put yourself first—but you don’t love yourself enough. He quotes the Buddha: ‘The moment you see how important it is to love yourself, you will stop making others suffer.'”

Twyla Tharp

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source: The Collaborative Habit, with Jesse Kornbluth (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 14.

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category: relationship, self-love, suffering

medium: nonfiction

“I wish one could be sure the suffering had a loving side. The thought to look down some day, and see the crooked steps we came, from a safer place, must be a precious thing…”

Emily Dickinson

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source: May 1862 letter to Louise and Frances Norcross, in Emily Dickinson Letters, Emily Fragos ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), 194.

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category: depression, grief, mourning, suffering

medium: Letter

“You know what a thorough sufferer I can be. I not only hit bottom, I walk for miles and miles on it.”

Saul Bellow

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source: letter to Pascal Covici, dated November 10, 1959, in Saul Bellow: Letters (New York: Viking, 2010), 184.

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category: depression, despair, suffering

medium: letter

notes: Pascal Covici was a book editor and publisher who edited prominent writers, including Saul Bellow, John Steinbeck, and Arthur Miller

“It isn’t the things that are happening to us that cause us to suffer, it’s what we say to ourselves about the things that are happening. That’s where the suffering comes from.”