Quotenik
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suffering

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

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

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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.'”

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

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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…”

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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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medium: Letter

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

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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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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.”

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source: “Talking to Ourselves,” Shambhala Mountain Center, August 19, 2003.

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medium: Q&A

“When does a job feel meaningful? Whenever it allows us to generate delight or reduce suffering in others.”

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source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (New York: Pantheon, 2009), 78.

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medium: nonfiction

“I’m interested in the ways in which stories of suffering might be used to mask other, less marketable stories of suffering.”

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source: David Shields, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 42.

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medium: nonfiction

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