Charles Bukowski Quotes

… the most uncouth … mental torture

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can make me think I deserved it.

Words don't hurt you." Which is one of the hugest criminal lies perpetrated by adults against children in this world. Because words hurt more than any physical pain.

Everyone is tortured. Do you know anyone who isn't?

You can be chased home or hit or called names or spit on, and it's over. You have the memory of it, but it's very different from the emotional and psychological experience of feeling invisible, of not learning the confidence to stand up in class and speak.

I have been driven to the edge by parental alienation for many years now. You have to go through this to understand.

Bullying made me feel insecure, alone, ugly, powerless, and hopeless at times.

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

It's the worst kind of cruelty — the thoughtless kind. You can't cope with it.

Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can hurt like hell.

Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer--both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams.

The body is not the only target of rape. Violence does not always take a visible form, and not all wounds gush blood.

According to Madam Pomfrey, thoughts could leave deeper scars than almost anything else.

Family was a fertile breeding ground for the kind of psychological bacteria that warped minds and devoured hope.

Every fear, every night terror, every hour I cried for Liev, every fight with Sebastian is registered as a neat white scar.

Sticks and stones can break your bones, but names can kill you.

People say you need to be strong, smart, and lucky to survive hard times, war, a natural disaster, or physical torture. But I say emotional abuse—anxiety, fear, guilt, and degradation—is far worse and much harder to survive.

But persistent name calling? that prolongs hurt. It stretches out. Each nasty word stretches the rubber band further away until finally, one day, it snaps back at you with maximum impact

Words can bruise and break hearts, and minds as well. There are no black and blue marks, no broken bones to put in plaster casts, and therefore no prison bars for the offender.

You hurt her by starving yourself, you hurt her with your lies, and by fighting everybody who tries to help you. Emma can only sleep a couple of hours a night now. She's haunted by nightmares of monsters that eat our whole family. They eat us slowly, she says, so we can feel their sharp teeth.

It's terrifying to see someone inside of whom a vital spring seems to have been broken. It's particularly terrifying to see him in your mirror.

Bullying can be physical, verbal or emotional. Words and threats are just as painful as fists, especially with social media these days. For those of you who don't know, I was actually bullied as a young boy on one occasion.

There was hell in her eyes! She was worn and jaded Her soul is at war with the life she has led. As I looked on that face so strangely faded I wonder God did not strike me dead.

There are a thousand ways to hurt someone you love that have nothing to do with physical violence.

We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us.