“Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder.
I sob, I sob.”

“I didn't know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of the throat and I'd cry for a week.”

“To these crocodile tears they will add sobs, fiery sighs, and sorrowful countenance.”

“The numbness of his loss had passed, and the pain would hit me out of nowhere, doubling me over, racking my body with sobs. Where are you? I would cry out in my mind. Where have you gone? Of course, there was never any answer.”

“Compassionate love may be strong. It sobs, it burns, then it wipes away its tears – and it does nothing.”

“Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.”

“I come to make song, after the tears.
And even if a choir of men
sprayed my tongue with silence,
poetry will come, with liberating voice,
to make my song fall from the trees
and reach the most deeply buried abysses of those tears
that the child lent me when crying himself into life.Because my infant song
is stronger than man’s tears,
and it could even conquer me
robbing the need of tears from the sun and the wind.”

“Though a crucified life or an agonized death,
Though long, or quick and sharp,
I am firmly wrought in the endless thread
Of Destiny's woof and warp.
And I do not shrink, though a wave of pain
Sobs over me now and then,
As I think of those "saddest of all sad words,"
The pitiful "might have been."”

“This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.”

“Not as in rest she bowed,
But large hot tears were coursing down her cheek.
And her low-panted sobs broke awefully
Upon the sleeping echoes of the night.”