Ellen Glasgow Quotes

An unacknowledged trauma is like a wound that never heals over and may start to bleed again at any time.

For most of my life, I believed that my father had broken many of my bones. They were emotional and psychological bones; things no one could see, things that caused me to limp through life clutching for and holding on to people and situations that often rendered me immobile.

The past is still, for us, a place that is not safely settled.

He carried his childhood like a hurt warm bird held to his middle-aged breast.

Maybe the ultimate wound is the one that makes you miss the war you got it in.

Funny how internal scars never healed. They were the souvenirs of the past.

some kinds of beauty did not heal, but hollowed the pain even deeper.

Present unhappiness is selfish; past sorrow is compassionate.

A wound that goes unacknowledged and unwept is a wound that cannot heal.

All damaged people are dangerous. Survival makes them so.' 'Why?' 'Because they have no pity. They know what others can survive, as they did.

I know what it feels like to be bruised; I know what it feels like to carry things around with you that never totally heal. There's closure and then there's stuff that's kind of like, Well, I guess it's going to be in the minivan forever. And you carry it with you and you continue on your journey with your minivan full of stuff, which I think most of us do.

The past was so past it hurt.

Every present anger derives from past weakness.

I don't think anybody thinks about their past much, unless they're in a mental institution.

It's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out.

The more we idealize the past and refuse to acknowledge our childhood sufferings, the more we pass them on unconsciously to the next generation.

I wonder how many years Suga has been carrying his curse around with him. I forget that other people in the world have broken parts too.

Moral wounds have this peculiarity - they may be hidden, but they never close; always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart.

Don't put your life on hold so that you can dwell on the unfairness of past hurts.

We may talk a good game and write even better ones, but we never outgrow those small wounded things we were when we were five and six and seven.

If only a man could spit his past out so easily.

You must never allow something that happened to you to become a morbidly treasured heirloom that you carry, show people, put back in its black velvet pouch and then tuck back into your jacket where you can keep it close to your heart.

Pain and suffering that are not transformed are usually projected onto others.

They're already taking my future! They can't have the things that mattered to me in the past!