Merle Shain Quotes

Often, we feel helpless in lots of situations in our lives. The way anger gets a grip on us is it seems to be a way to extricate ourselves from helplessness.

If someone has gone through a lot of emotional pain, including the loss of loved ones, that person may try to build a shell around his or her feelings to protect him- or herself from the pain.

Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.

It was so much easier to be angry. Being angry made him feel strong, even though-- and this contradiction did nothing to diminish his anger-- he was angry only because his position was so weak.

More often than not, anger is actually an indication of weakness rather than of strength.

I often cried when I got angry; I hated that. Crying just made you look weak, no matter what triggered it.

We manufacture anger to give ourselves the illusion of power when we feel weak and helpless.

self-pity is better than none.

Throughout the ordeal, I learned that getting mad was easier than being sad. Anger was something I could control. I could settle into an easy rhythm of blame and hate. Focus my energy on something than the ache in my heart.

I'd rather deal with anger than apathy.

Sometimes people say terrible things when they're scared. They don't mean to, but they can't help it. They lash out because if they can see that their words hurt someone else, it makes them feel as if they aren't completely powerless.

Sometimes, when you're so sad you don't know what to do, it helps to be angry.

I'm very sensitive and I'm quite a soft person, and I cry a lot when things upset me.

I'm not an angry woman. I'm not bitter.

Anger is energising. The opposite of anger is depression, which is anger turned inward.

If I feel vulnerable, I get angry.

I think that it's okay to be mad at someone who hurt you. This isn't about, like, the pageantry of trying to seem like nothing affects you.

What's wrong with being angry? There's a lot of stuff to be angry about. If you're angry, anger covers pain. I don't know if you can truly deal with pain.

A man can't eat anger for breakfast and sleep with it at night and not suffer damage to his soul.

The easiest thing to feel is sadness.

As we do at such times I turned on my automatic pilot and went through the motions of normalcy on the outside, so that I could concentrate all my powers on surviving the near-mortal wound inside.

I learned to make things not matter, to put a seal on my hopes and place them on a high shelf, out of reach. And by telling myself that there was nothing inside those hopes anyway, I avoided the wounds of deep disappointment. The pain was no worse than the quick sting of a booster shot. And yet thinking about this makes me ache again. How is it that as a child I knew I should have been loved more? Is everyone born with a bottomless emotional resevoir?

What's that?" "The laundry basket?" "No, next to it." "I don't see anything next to it." "It's my last shred of dignity. It's very small.

I am angry nearly every day of my life, but I have learned not to show it; and I still try to hope not to feel it, though it may take me another forty years to do it.