The Body Quotes

“The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them.”
― Stephen King

“And I wonder if there is really any point to what I'm doing, or what I'm supposed to make of a world where a man can get rich playing "let's pretend”
― Stephen King, The Body

“So, I will just share it here, because I truly believe that the only universal “body” is our breath, because breath is the only thing that all human bodies experience and as such, it is something we all must share, not just with each other, but, in one way or another, with all living things on earth. To this day, I still can’t think of a better way of truly breaking us free from the visual rut that the canon of Western art has left us languishing in, than the breath of an Indigenous Australian woman.”
― Hannah Gadsby, Ten Steps to Nanette

“His work seems to confirm my old axiom: it is useless to try to keep the whole body alive.”
― Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel

“When people are enjoying a film they say "I didn’t see the time go by"… but I think that when time flies and you don’t see time passing by you are robbed of an hour and a half or two hours of your life. Because all you have in life is time. With my films you’re aware of every second passing through your body.”
― Chantal Akerman

“Physical pain always mimes death and the infliction of physical pain is always a mock execution.”
― Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World

“It is the intense pain that destroys a person's self and world, a destruction experienced spatially as either the contraction of the universe down to the immediate vicinity of the body or as the body swelling to fill the entire universe.”
― Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World

“Is there something inherently queer about pregnancy itself, insofar as it profoundly alters one’s “normal” state, and occasions a radical intimacy with—and radical alienation from—one’s body? How can an experience so profoundly strange and wild and transformative also symbolize or enact the ultimate conformity? Or is this just another disqualification of anything tied too closely to the female animal from the privileged term (in this case, nonconformity, or radicality)?”
― Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts

“fragility does not reside in things so much as in flesh. An object can be repaired or replaced, but the body cannot. Perhaps it is stronger than the soul, which once broken can remain so forever, but it is weaker than wood, lead, or iron.”
― Laura Imai Messina, The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World

“I wore the scent of weather inside
my body like a sacred love.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta

“I leaned back across the table and shut my eyes and thought that at some point in the future, long after humanity had run its course, after some other creature had replaced us, maybe, or maybe even after the next creatures had been replaced by whatever came after them, at some point in a future I could not fully imagine, a question might occur in some mind, and that question might be What was the human? What was the world of the human? - though it would be in some unforeseen language, perhaps a language that was without sound, perhaps a language that did not have to grow from a damp, contaminated mouth - and if this question ever did arise in that future being's mind, would it even be possible to catalog and make sense of all our griefs, our pains and wars? Our delineations? Our need for order? The question arose then - did all this human trouble begin in our bodies, these failing things, weaker or stronger, lighter or darker, taller or shorter? Why did they cause so much trouble for us? Why did we use them against one another? Why did we think the content of a body meant anything?”
― Catherine Lacey, Pew

“I was twelve going on thirteen when I first saw a dead human being. It happened in 1960, a long time ago... although sometimes it doesn't seem that long to me. Especially on the nights I wake up from dreams where the hail falls into his open eyes.”
― Stephen King, Different Seasons

“it wasn’t the body but the way he animated it that had thrilled her.”
― Jeanine Cummins, American Dirt

“Through study (acquiring self-knowledge), we bridge the gap between the conscious and unconscious, the soul and ego, and the masculine and feminine.”
― Author Serena Jade

“What is the difference between a Soul Mate vs. Twin Flame?

Your Soul Mates are deeply connected to your Soul, and your Twin Flame. Twin Flames are two sides of the same Soul. But nonetheless all are connected to your Soul Group.

We have more than one Soul Mate and have spent many lifetimes and beyond with some of them. But the leaf itself is the ultimate Soul Mate- our Soul’s counterpart and it is said, we only met them 12 times during our lifetimes. But, now in our evolution we are ready to consciously stand side by side with them!”
― Serena Jade

“Our rituals are same. The commonality of a sky—
The body is an instrument. A motley of sounds.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta

“The shape of remembrance etched
in the body's exertion, first leaf,
then foliage. Even the cathedral
with an empty backyard at night
clad in gossamer light from the moon.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta

“What is woven on the loom of fate
What is woven in the councils of princes
Is woven also in our veins, our brains,
Is woven like a pattern of living worms
In the guts of the women of Canterbury”
― T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral

“We are right to note the licence and disobedience of this member which thrusts itself forward so inopportunely when we do not want it to, and which so inopportunely lets us down when we most need it; it imperiously contests for authority with our will: it stubbornly and proudly refuses all our incitements, both mental and manual. Yet if this member were arraigned for rebelliousness, found guilty because of it and then retained me to plead its cause, I would doubtless cast suspicion on our other members for having deliberately brought a trumped-up charge, plotting to arm everybody against it and maliciously accusing it alone of a defect common to them all. I ask you to reflect whether there is one single part of our body which does not often refuse to function when we want it to, yet does so when we want it not to. Our members have emotions proper to themselves which arouse them or quieten them down without leave from us. How often do compelling facial movements bear witness to thoughts which we were keeping secret, so betraying us to those who are with us? The same causes which animate that member animate – without our knowledge – the heart, the lungs and the pulse: the sight of some pleasant object can imperceptibly spread right through us the flame of a feverish desire. Is it only the veins and muscles of that particular member which rise or fall without the consent of our will or even of our very thoughts? We do not command our hair to stand on end with fear nor our flesh to quiver with desire. Our hands often go where we do not tell them; our tongues can fail, our voices congeal, when they want to. Even when we have nothing for the pot and would fain order our hunger and thirst not to do so, they never fail to stir up those members which are subject to them, just as that other appetite does: it also deserts us, inopportunely, whenever it wants to. That sphincter which serves to discharge our stomachs has dilations and contractions proper to itself, independent of our wishes or even opposed to them; so do those members which are destined to discharge the kidneys.

To show the limitless authority of our wills, Saint Augustine cites the example of a man who could make his behind produce farts whenever he would: Vives in his glosses goes one better with a contemporary example of a man who could arrange to fart in tune with verses recited to him; but that does not prove the pure obedience of that member, since it is normally most indiscreet and disorderly.17 In addition I know one Behind so stormy and churlish that it has obliged its master to fart forth wind constantly and unremittingly for forty years and is thus bringing him to his death.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“I always argued, food should not be labeled good vs. bad. One is either healthy, or not as healthy."-Serena Jade”
― Serena Jade, The Body: Temple of the Ego and Soul

“There is a coastline beyond the mountain and a
mountain beyond every ocean. Sky coagulates like blood in
your body.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta

“The granularity of bones in
a body. A forest with galaxies of moss.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta, Ghost Tracks

“Ma naps on the sofa, and for a moment I can imagine what she’ll look like when she dies, when her face slackens and the air abandons her lungs. Around her are objects, papers, photo frames filled with faces she hasn’t seen in years. Among these things her body looks lifeless and alone, and I wonder if the pressure of an audience is what forces the blood to pump. It’s easy to unravel when no one is watching .”
― Avar Doshi

“Ma naps on the sofa, and for a moment I can imagine what she’ll look like when she dies, when her face slackens and the air abandons her lungs. Around her are objects, papers, photo frames filled with faces she hasn’t seen in years. Among these things her body looks lifeless and alone, and I wonder if the pressure of an audience is what forces the blood to pump. It’s easy to unravel when no one is watching.”
― Avni Doshi, Burnt Sugar

“I thought I could become normal by deciding, but thoughts are not facts; the body is facts. And if you silence the body, well, you can't.”
― Elissa Bassist, Hysterical: A Memoir

“What rationalism from d’Alembert to Dawkins is loath to acknowledge is that human rationality is a corporeal one. We think as we do roughly because of the kind of bodies we have, as Thomas Aquinas noted. Reason is authentically rational only when it is rooted in what lies beyond itself. It must find its home in what is other than reason, which is not to say in what is inimical to it. Any form of reason which grasps itself purely in terms of ideas, and then fumbles for some less cerebral way in which to connect with the sensory world, is debilitated from the outset.”
― Terry Eagleton, Culture and the Death of God

“I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarse half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them.”
― William Shakespeare, Richard III

“This is really a good time," Vern said simply, and he didn't just mean being
off-limits inside the dump, or fudging our folks, or going on a hike up the railroad
tracks into Harlow; he meant those things but it seems to me now that there was more,
and that we all knew it. Everything was there and around us. We knew exactly who
we were and exactly where we were going. It was grand.”
― Stephen King

“The Tilism-e-Azam will never end. It will remain and you and I, with our captive souls will live on. There is happiness in living inside an illusion, who needs a soul? Rooh ki parwaaz ho gayi, yeh jism hai jo jeeye jaa raha hai, the soul has flown away and this stubborn body lives on. Mirza Kallan sighs, takes his bowl and lota, collects the coins from his host, touches his forehead in salam and leaves, ignoring the murmuring and protesting audience.”
― Tarana Husain Khan, The Begum and the Dastan

“Alright, alright, Mickey's a mouse, Donald's a duck, Pluto's a dog. What's Goofy?”
― Stephen King