Avi Quotes

Fear is not a disease of the body; fear kills the soul.

Oh, he did his best to make their short lives miserable, because that was his job, but nothing he could think up was half as bad as the stuff they thought up themselves.

The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race.

Fear is, I believe, a most effective tool in destroying the soul of an individual - and the soul of a people.

The psychology of brutality was worse than the beatings.

I could never hurt him enough to make his betrayal stop hurting. And it hurts, in every part of my body.

She tortured everybody around her, but only because she was more tortured than anyone.

There was no one clear point of loss. It happened over and over again in a thousand small ways and the only truth there was to learn was that there was no getting used to it.

But those with shattered souls find it very difficult to speak.

Hope is the most sensitive part of a poor wretch's soul; whoever raises it only to torment him is behaving like the executioners in Hell who, they say, incessantly renew old wounds and concentrate their attention on that area of it that is already lacerated.

We're all damaged somehow."-A Great and Terrible Beauty

The abused children are alone with their suffering, not only within the family, but also within themselves. They cannot crate a place in their own soul where they could cry their beart out.

Sometimes...you can cry until there's nothing wet in you. You can scream and curse to where your throat rebels and ruptures. You can pray, all you want, to whatever god you think will listen. And, still it makes no difference. It goes on, with no sign as to when it might release you. And you know that if it ever did relent...it would not be because it cared.

In times of horror and torment prayer is a great thing Nobody answers But at least it stops you from thinking.

Sorrow can be a bully.

I think we start suffering as soon as we come out of the womb. I think that people tend to stereotype. When they think of suffering, they think of abuse - physical abuse, emotional abuse, poverty, that kind of thing. There's different levels of suffering. I don't think that it has to do with how much money you have - if you were raised in the ghetto or the Hamptons. For me it's more about perception: self-perception and how you perceive the world.

THIS TORTURE Why should we tell you our love stories when you spill them together like blood in the dirt? Love is a pearl lost on the ocean floor, or a fire we can’t see, but how does saying that push us through the top of the head into the light above the head? Love is not an iron pot, so this boiling energy won’t help. Soul, heart, self. Beyond and within those is one saying, How long before I’m free of this torture!

Many times I see you as a portrait of torture.

Mr. Solomon was right the worst kind of torture is watching someone you love get hurt.

The hand descended. Nearer and nearer it came. It touched the ends of his upstanding hair. He shrank down under it. It followed down after him, pressing more closely against him. Shrinking, almost shivering. He still managed to hold himself together. It was a torment, this hand that touched him and violated his instinct. He could not forget in a day all the evil that had been wrought him at the hands of men.

Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound Upon a wheel of fire; that mine own tears Do scald like molten lead.

I could tell you it's the heart, but what is really killing him is loneliness. Memories are worse than bullets.

We could hardly believe that after so many ordeals, after all the trials of modern skepticism, there was still so much left in our souls to destroy.

The thing that most people didn't understand, if they weren't in his line if work, was that a rape victim and a victim of a fatal accident were both gone forever. The difference was that the rape victim still had to go through the motions of being alive.