“If everyone could feel everyone else’s pain, who would torture?”
Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), p. 115
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Octavia E. Butler 107
American science fiction writer 1947–2006Related quotes
“Alone dwells every man and everyone mocks everyone else, and a deserted island is our pain.”
Le livre de ma mère [The Book of My Mother] (1954)
Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 509
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation
“Torture injures everyone who comes into contact with it and corrodes the country that abides it.”
Quoted in Harper's Magazine, October 5, The People v. The Torture Team: Six Questions for Law & Order's Rene Balcer: On torture.
“I don't know how everyone else feels, but I'm exhausted.”
Quoted September 05, 1995, on playing in his 2,130th consecutive game equaling Lou Gehrig's record; The Baseball Timeline, Burt Solomon, p. 1018
Source: The Corrections (2001)
Context: All around him, millions of newly minted American millionaires were engaged in the identical pursuit of feeling extraordinary - of buying the perfect Victorian, of skiing the virgin slope, of knowing the chef personally, of locating the beach that had no footprints. There were further tens of millions of young Americans who didn't have money but were nonetheless chasing the Perfect Cool. And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary? Who would perform the thankless work of being comparatively uncool?
“Isn't everyone a part of everyone else?”
“Who's the mental one here? Is it me, or everyone else?”
The Moaning of Life, Karl on Kids