Pain and Despair

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale, Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.

The sun’s o’ercast with blood: fair day, adieu! Which is the side that I must go withal? I am with both: each army hath a hand; And in their rage, I having hold of both, They whirl asunder and dismember me.

I will instruct my sorrows to be proud; For grief is proud and makes his owner stoop.

Why, all delights are vain; but that most vain Which, with pain purchas’d doth inherit pain.

These words are razors to my wounded heart.

Give me another horse! bind up my wounds!

A grievous burden was thy birth to me; Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy.

To weep is to make less the depth of grief.

Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all. Close up his eyes, and draw the curtain close; And let us all to meditation.

O lente, lente currite noctis equi: 7 [Slowly, slowly run, O horses of the night:] The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, The Devil will come, and Faustus must be damned. O, I’ll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down? See, see where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament! One drop would save my soul—half a drop: ah, my Christ!

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed In one self place; for where we are is hell, And where hell is there must we ever be.

Why this is hell, nor am I out of it: Think’st thou that I who saw the face of God, And tasted the eternal joys of Heaven, Am not tormented with ten thousand hells, In being deprived of everlasting bliss?

Yet in our asshen olde is fyr yreke.

If no love is, O God, what fele I so? And if love is, what thing and which is he? If love be good, from whennes cometh my woo?

My mother was accursed the night she bore me, and I am faint with envy of all the dead.

God, these old men! How they pray for death! How heavy they find this life in the slow drag of days! And yet, when Death comes near them, You will not find one who will rise and walk with him, not one whose years are still a burden to him.

Never say that marriage has more of joy than pain.

How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be When there’s no help in truth!

Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.

Keep your bones in good motion, kid, and quietly consume and digest what is necessary. I think it is not so much important to build a literary thing as it is not to hurt things. I think it is important to be quiet and in love with park benches; solve whole areas of pain by walking across a rug .

Don’t ever write a novel unless it hurts like a hot turd coming out.

For Christ sake write and don’t worry what the boys will say nor whether it will be a masterpiece nor what. I write one page of masterpiece to ninety one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the waste-basket.… Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously .