My illness is life itself.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- The speaker equates personal suffering with the fundamental experience of being alive.
- In plain terms
- My sickness feels like the same as living.
- What can you take from it?
- Embrace suffering as an unavoidable part of existence.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Is suffering a requirement of being alive?
- How do you find meaning in pain?
Another view
Equating pain with life may discourage seeking relief or healing.
More from William Saroyan
Neither love nor hate, nor any order of intense adherence to personal involvement in human experience, may be so apt to serve the soul as this freedom and this…
Permalink to quote #127 Illness must be considered to be as natural as health.
Permalink to quote #129 I was an old man by the time I took that walk to the Public Library in San Francisco, because the years between birth and twenty are the years in which the sou…
Permalink to quote #126
Related quotes
Cash: I went into a coma and I was there for 12 days. They all thought I was dying and they couldn't diagnose what was wrong with me. They finally came up with…
Johnny CashJohnny Cash quote #4 Is there life before death? That's chalked up In Ballymurphy. Competence with pain, Coherent miseries, a bite and a sup, We hug our little destiny again.
Seamus HeaneySeamus Heaney quote #4 I am not ill. But do not worry, one day, I will certainly die.
Charles de GaulleCharles de Gaulle quote #14