Kevin Powers Quotes

I remind myself that my pain is not unique. Everybody suffers.

Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.

If there is one person on the planet who still is suffering from loneliness and from pain or despair, and we don't know about it, or we don't want to know about it, then something is wrong with the world.

surrounded by strangers who love me (un)strangers made strange by pain

You can run away from home But you can't run away from your pain I sit here alone There's always someone else to blame.

But there's no joy at all, people say "Oh well he's drunk and happy let him sleep it off"--The poor drunkard is *crying*--He's crying for his mother and father and great brother and great friend, he's crying for help. (p.111)

I've had the most untraumatic life a human being can have. But I've always been drawn to those who have had far more complicated histories.

There's something universal about illness... Whether you like it, at some level all patients are saying, 'Daddy, Mommy, help me, tell me it's going to be alright.'

That is how prison is tearing me up inside. It hurts every day. Every day takes me further from my life.

No one doesn't have loss. No one doesn't have pain.

Everybody gets lonely.

It is difficult to ever think about your loved one having suffered.

One of the things that happens in our regular lives is that when we're in moments of pain or feeling alone, we may hesitate to reach out to others because we may think - they're not going through the same experiences I am.

I know what it's like to be humiliated.

The world is always ending for someone. It’s a good line. I give it to the father of the child. He says it to his wife. ‘The world is always ending for someone,’ he says. She is trying to quieten the baby, and does not hear him. I doubt that it would matter if she did.

I think cruelty is just loneliness disguised as bitterness.

To live is to hurt others, and through others, to hurt oneself. Cruel earth! How can we manage not to touch anything? To find what ultimate exile?

One of the most painful aspects of suffering is the loneliness of it. Others may offer support or empathy, but no one can walk the road to Moriah in our place.

One day he said, "I'll tell this town How it feels to be an unfunny clown." And he told them all why he looked so sad, And he told them all why he felt so bad. He told of Pain and Rain and Cold, He told of Darkness in his soul, And after he finished his tale of woe, Did everyone cry? Oh no, no, no, They laughed until they shook the trees... And while the world laughed outside. Cloony the Clown sat down and cried.

Feeling alone and unseen can intensify the experience of being harassed, shamed, or bullied.

My greatest affliction... is perhaps the major theme of my writings, the affliction of loneliness that follows me like a shadow, a very ponderous shadow too heavy to drag after me all of my days and nights.

Everything you do makes my body scream with loneliness.

Shame works like the zoom lens on a camera. When we are feeling shame, the camera is zoomed in tight and all we see is our flawed selves, alone and struggling.(page 68)

Loneliness sometimes gives me a quantity of creativeness - you're drinking another glass of wine and you're feeling even worse. Art doesn't work without pain; art also exists for compensating pain.

Feeling someone else's anger is bad; being left alone is worse.