Ivo Andric Quotes

What he could bear in the waking world he could not by night and he sat awake for fear the dream would return.

(His) sadness grew; it became a rock inside him, pulling him down. He carried the sadness everywhere, morning, noon, and night. It hurt to breathe.

I wanted to pray for an hour, but I keep thinking and thinking, and always sick thoughts, and my head aches - what is the use of praying? - it's only a sin! It is strange, too, that I am not sleepy: in great, too great sorrow, after the first outbursts one is always sleepy. Men condemned to death, they say, sleep very soundly on the last night. And so it must be, it si the law of nature, otherwise their strength would not hold out... I lay down on the sofa but I did not sleep...

Guilt is a tireless horse. Grief ages into sorrow, and sorrow is an enduring rider.

When you have a sorrow that is too great it leaves no room for any other.

My rest might have been blissful enough, only a sad heart broke it.

sorrow is easier than guilt.

Discomfort guides my tongue And bids me speak of nothing but despair.

She lost much of her appetite. At night, an invisible hand kept shaking her awake every few hours. Grief was physiological, a disturbance of the blood. Sometimes a whole minute would pass in nameless dread - the bedside clock ticking, the blue moonlight coating the window like glue - before she'd remember the brutal fact that had caused it.

There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation.

Delia picked at the raw sores of her conscience...Drunk or sober, Delia lived in the small town in her heart, ignoring the world in which all her love had turned to grief.

A heavy heart bears not a nimble tongue.

A breath of steam trickles out, filled with the sobs of a grown woman breaking into girl-sized pieces.

There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up, holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship's, smooths and contains the rocker. It's an inside kind--wrapped tight like skin. Then there is the loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive. On its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one's own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.

I wonder how many years Suga has been carrying his curse around with him. I forget that other people in the world have broken parts too.

My fingers curl through the holes in the wicker, through the wet grass beneath it, trying to hold tight to the sharp blades of the present. Somewhere in my brain a sinkhole is bubbling over, and each bubble contains a scene from a tiny sunken world ... I have never been the prophet of my own past before. It makes me wonder how the healthy dreamers can bear to sleep at all, if sleep means that you have to peer into that sinkhole by yourself. ... I had almost forgotten this occipital sorrow, the way you are so alone with the things you see in dreams.

And yes, to answer you seriously, I am beginning to be... well, not bored, but tempted; afraid, but tempted. When you've been in pain for a long time, when you wake up every morning with a rising sense of hysteria, then boredom is what you want, marathon sleeps, a silence in yourself.

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed The dear repose for limbs with travel tired; But then begins a journey in my head To work my mind, when body's work's expir'd: For then my thoughts-from far where I abide- Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee, And keep my drooping eyelids open wide, Looking on darkness which the blind do see: Save that my soul's imaginary sight Presents thy shadow to my sightless view, Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night, Makes black night beauteous and her old face new. Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind, For thee, and for myself no quiet find.

For I need this scar over my heart to remind me. Crazy as it sounds, if I can bear the wound on my body, it lessens what I must carry on my soul. How he knew that about me, I cannot fathom.

Physical suffering apart, not a single sorrow exists that can touch us except through our thoughts.

Each substance of a grief has twenty shadows.

Desperate remorse swallows the present in a quenchless rage.

Not knowing whether to wait or to forget is the worst kind of suffering.

...two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary.