Simone Weil Quotes

Why am I fighting to live, If I am just living to fight Why am I trying to see. When there aint nothing in sight Why am I trying to give, When no one gives me a try Why am I dying to live, If I am just living to die?

...occasionally I wished I could walk through a picture window and have the sharp, broken shards slash me to ribbons so I would finally look like I felt.

Anger punishes the bearer's heart. Who remains angry suffers most. For many, the search for perfection virtually guarantees it will be found, and disregarded in order to continue the search. Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps.

Of course there are times when I think, 'I'd be better out of this.'

I bleed like nobody else.

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you're a human being, you feel, you suffer. You're gay, you're sick, you're nervous or whatever.

... pain doesn't listen to reason. It has its own reason, which is not reasonable.

I know my head isn't screwed on straight. I want to leave, transfer, warp myself to another galaxy. I want to confess everything, hand over the guilt and mistake and anger to someone else. There is a beast in my gut, I can hear it scraping away at the inside of my ribs. Even if I dump the memory, it will stay with me, staining me. My closest is a good thing, a quiet place that helps me hold these thoughts inside my head where no one can hear them.

Sorrow and frustration have their power. The world is moved by people with great discontents. Happiness is a drug. It can make men blind and deaf and insensible to reality. There are times when only sorrow can give to sorrow.

The suffering itself is not so bad; it's the resentment against suffering that is the real pain.

What I really hated, of course, was my mind. There must have been an off switch somewhere, but I was damned if I could find it.

...you are battered and bruised in the collisions between reminiscence and reality.

This Cruel Age has deflected me.

I am...sad and angry. Why is my spirit so sad and angry? I look back at my life and all I can remember is rage and rage and rage.

When I turn the lights out, when I close my eyes, reality overcomes me, I'm living a lie.

I'm horrified most of the time. I wish it was more complicated, but at the same time, each time I try to complicate it I hate it because I hate the idea of writing to impress.

And the more I see Pleasures about me, so much more I feel Torment within me.

Reality is crushing. The world is a wrong-sized shoe. How can anyone stand it?

Was she really beautiful? Was she at least what they call attractive? She was exasperation, she was torture.

That's what I can't stand. I know I'll bounce back, and that's what I can't stand.

He was suffering from the loss of an illusion.

It is not humiliating to be unhappy. Physical suffering is sometimes humiliating, but the suffering of being cannot be, it is life.

Melanctha Herbert was always losing what she had in all the things she saw. Melanctha was always being left when she was not leaving others. Melanctha Herbert always loved too hard and much too often. She was always full with mystery and subtle movements and denials and vague distrusts and complicated disillusions. Then Melanctha would be sudden and impulsive and unbounded in some faith, and then she would suffer and be strong in her repression. Melanctha Herbert was always seeking rest and quiet and always she could only find new ways to be in trouble.

But it was not the room’s disorder which was frightening; it was the fact that when one began searching for the key to this disorder, one realized that it was not to be found in any of the usual places. For this was not a matter of habit or circumstance or temperament; it was a matter of punishment and grief.