Dave Eggers Quotes

Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled but halved. No man is an island

Misery loves company. There's a lot to that.

There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.

One pain is lessened by another's anguish.

Suffering is easier to endure when shared.

I think the idea that you can go this alone is - was a huge mistake. And unfortunately, there was a price paid in terms of suffering and pain for people in New Orleans.

If you learn the language of loss early, I think you seek out others who have experienced the same thing, who speak that same language of loss.

I was at the premiere of 'Prisoners,' and I heard two thousand people scream at the same time. I turned to my wife and said, 'I love cinema!' It's the sharing of emotions together, and it's collective. It's one of the last communions we have.

Poetry is for me Eucharistic. You take someone else's suffering into your body, their passion comes into your body, and in doing that you commune, you take communion, you make a community with others.

Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys.

The desert has its holiness of silence, the crowd its holiness of conversation.

When he is pierced, I bleed.

I was fascinated by all of it. The sounds of the theater and the audience, their rapture when a play took over and moved them and held them quietly... When the audience was truly moved, it was absolutely quiet. They were in a communion because they were learning the truth about themselves.

At the end of the day we feel the same; we all hurt.

Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer more than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims....and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But - how can I put this? I'm almost......drawn to them.

But - I cannot make a choice. I have my own sorrow, but I suffer with him, too; I share his pain. I understand all - that is my trouble.

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

The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering for want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got.

The most intimate feeling people can share is neither love nor hate, but pain.

Silence is the tortured man's revenge.

...those who love suffer when who they love suffers.

In contrast, compassion manifests in us as the offering of kindness rather than withdrawal. Because compassion is a state of mind that is itself open, abundant and inclusive, it allows us to meet pain more directly. With direct seeing, we know that we are not alone in our suffering and that no one need feel alone when in pain. Seeing our oneness is the beginning of compassion, and it allows us to reach beyond aversion and separation.

It easeth some, though none it ever cured, to think their dolour others have endured.

Even the damned in hell have the community of their suffering.