Eve Ensler Quotes

I almost had to have my leg amputated because of an infection.

The day in 2004 when the radiologist told me I had invasive cancer, I walked down the hospital corridor looking for a phone to call my husband, and I could almost see the fear coming toward me like a big, black shadow.

Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun. First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that.

Fortunately, the shooting pain in my back masked the pain of my broken sternum.

My life got turned upside down when I found out I had cancer.

I think when you go through any surgery, your body changes. And with that, it can be probably the toughest mental challenge you're gonna face.

Cancer is tough. Even saying it, it's a tough word to say.

I've been through hell. It's hard to think you have this life, and then all of a sudden - was it a lie? You're struggling because it wasn't real. But I survived. It was hard, but it didn't kill me.

It's harder to heal than it is to kill.

My skull, my eyes, my nose three times, my jaw, my shoulder, my chest, two fingers, a knee, everything from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. Listing what body parts he has broken

Unzip my body, take my heart out

Zach found himself remembering something he'd heard Soledad and Leo saying the previous night, about healing. That it was mysterious. That it took time. And that Lucy was just at the beginning. That a terrible thing had happened - two terrible things, really - but they were now over. And that Lucy would be okay, in the end.

If you saw her in these moments, you might think she was collecting her thoughts in order to go forward. But I see it another way: Her mind is being overwhelmed by two processes that must simultaneously proceed at full steam. One is to deal with and live in the present world. The other is to re-experience and mourn something that happened long ago. It is as though her lightness pulls her toward heaven, but the extra gravity around her keeps her earthbound.

The act of love strongly resembles torture or surgery.

What happened with cancer was that I just became a body. There was nothing else but body for a month. I was chemo'd and operated on and cut and poked. At first it was really horrifying and scary, and then it was just,Wow. You're in your body. This is body!

Of course it hurts", she grumbled, tipping my head further back. "Life sucks. Get over it

You were unsure which pain is worse -- the shock of what happened or the ache for what never will.

Iggy’s spine tightened, his face like ice. When he’d been at the School, they’d tried to surgically enhance his night vision. Now he was blind forever. Oops.

Writers remember everything...especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he'll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is the ability to remember the story of every scar. Art consists of the persistence of memory.

Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind's way of protecting itself from pain.

The longer I live, the less chance I'll ever recover from what life keeps doing to me.

Of all the things we can feel with our minds and bodies, severe pain is the purest, for it drives everything else from our awareness and focuses us as perfectly as we can ever be focused.

What is an "instant" death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those seconds must have been awful as her heart burst and her lungs collapsed and there was no air and no blood to her brain and only raw panic. What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous.

When the body is in pain, a distorted area of awareness is crying out to the rest of awareness for help.