Pankaj Mishra Quotes

There is only one effective antidote for mental suffering and that is physical pain.

The mind grows sicker than the body in contemplation of it's suffering.

The pain of the mind is worse than the pain of the body.

Pain is the mind. It's the mind. It's the thoughts of the mind.

One does not expect to be comfortable in prison. As a matter of fact, one's mental suffering is so much greater than any common physical distress that the latter is almost forgotten.

In the world of the present, in our time, we feel that suffering, anguish, the torments of body and soul, are greater than ever before in the history of mankind.

If you start to dwell on your pain, the amount of pain will increase.

I was extremely timid and to be made to feel that I was not wanted, although in a place where I had every right to be, even months afterwards caused me sometimes weeks of pain. Every time any one of these disagreeable incidents came into my mind, my heart sank, and I was anew tortured by the thought of what I had endured, almost as much as the incident itself.

I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind. Did he rape my head, too?

Pain is not the same as suffering. Left to itself, the body discharges pain spontaneously, letting go of it the moment that the underlying cause is healed. Suffering is pain that we hold on to. It comes from the mind’s mysterious instinct to believe that pain is good, or that it cannot be escaped, or that the person deserves it.

Man has to suffer. When he has no real afflictions, he invents some.

We're tortured, a lot of us, believe me.

The more unhappy you are, the more miserable you are, the more you're going to suffer.

I think emotional and mental pain is probably worse than physical pain. I think we don't realize that I have no arms or legs but we all have disabilities of some sort, some fear, some lost, some wishes that didn't come true, things we wish would be better.

Well, you know, there's depression and depression. What I mean by depression in my own case is that depression isn't just the blues. It's not just like I have a hangover in the weekend ... the girl didn't show up or something like that. It isn't that. It's not really depression, it's a kind of mental violence which stops you from functioning properly from one moment to the next. You lose something somewhere and suddenly you're gripped by a kind of angst of the heart and of the spirit.

Look at it this way: There are many here among us for whom the life force is best represented by the livid twitching of one tortured nerve, or even a full-scale anxiety attack. I do not subscribe to this point of view 100 percent, but I understand it, have lived it. Thus the shriek, the caterwaul, the chainsaw gnarlgnashing, the yowl and the whizz that decapitates may be reheard by the adventurous or emotionally damaged as mellifluous bursts of unarguable affirmation.

She had never dreamed there could be so much pain in a life when there was nothing physically wrong. She hurt all the time.

…she felt depressed beyond any thing she had ever known before.

For loneliness, worries, difficulties, the unsatisfied need for kindness and sympathy - that is what is hard to bear.

For a long time that's all I could do, howl and scream and cry like the wild animal of the night that I'd become.

The various forms of despair at the various stations on the road.

I do not believe anyone can be perfectly well, who has a brain and a heart

The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.

Worry itself is one of the most painful conditions.

Mental anguish always results from the avoidance of legitimate suffering.