You become the victim of the past, and your tormentor today is your self left over from yesterday.
When he has lost all hope, all object in life, man becomes a monster in his misery.
There is only one effective antidote for mental suffering and that is physical pain.
I'm scared of him," said Piggy, "and that's why I know him. If you're scared of someone you hate him but you can't stop thinking about him. You kid yourself he's all right really, an' then when you see him again; it's like asthma an' you can't breathe.
Ah, but depression - that is what we all hate. We the afflicted. Whereas the relatives and shrinks, the tribal ring, they rather welcome it: you are quiet and you suffer.
But I do nothing upon myself, and yet I am my own executioner.
It was cold and clammy in the stone cell; they called it the "cooler," and used it to reduce the temperature of the violent and intractable. It was a trouble-saving device; they just left the man there and forgot him, and his own tormented mind did the rest.
… the most uncouth … mental torture
A man's subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour.
We swung between madness and suicide ... it was beautiful!
Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self -- to the mediating intellect-- as to verge close to being beyond description. It thus remains nearly incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it in its extreme mode.
Everyone is tortured. Do you know anyone who isn't?
The madness of depression is, generally speaking, the antithesis of violence. It is a storm indeed, but a storm of murk. Soon evident are the slowed-down responses, near paralysis, psychic energy throttled back close to zero. Ultimately, the body is affected and feels sapped, drained.
For now they kill me with a living death.
A special form of misery had begun to oppress him of late. There was nothing poignant, nothing acute about it; but there was a feeling of permanence, of eternity about it; it brought a foretaste of hopeless years of this cold leaden misery, a foretaste of an eternity "on a square yard of space.
Do you know what happened the last time I loved someone?” Growled against my skin with such tempered violence that my shiver turned into a shudder. I nodded. “No you don’t.” Another lethal growl. “You only know how she died. Let me tell you how she lived— in fear. My actions horrified her, as they horrify you. My enemies exploited her, as they exploit you, so it was more than an advancing army that made her throw herself from our roof. It was me.
I grew up watching Kathy Bates, and 'Misery' is one of my favorite films.
She tortured everybody around her, but only because she was more tortured than anyone.
My mind was bursting with depression and anguish. I muttered imprecations and murmuring as I passed along. I was full of loathing and abhorrence of life, and all that life carries in its train.
We thrust our fingers into our ears to stop its moan; but it was no good; the cry cut like a drill into our heads, dragging minutes into hours, hours into years. We withered and grew old between those cries.
So that is what hell is. I would never have believed it. You remember: the fire and brimstone, the torture. Ah! the farce. There is no need for torture: Hell is other people.
Torture will give a dozen pence or more To keep a drab from bawling at his door. The public taste is quite a different thing Torture is positively paid to sing.
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.
GET RID OF MEANING. YOUR MIND IS A NIGHTMARE THAT HAS BEEN EATING YOU: NOW EAT YOUR MIND.
Pain is a forcing sieve that turns me to gruel.
