Stitches: A Memoir Suffering Quotes

This is the first time in the story we realize that not only are we going to see David being damaged emotionally, we're going to see him being damaged physically. It's the moment we know this tale probably won't turn out well.

When the elevator opens on the third floor of the hospital, David sees an old man in a wheelchair, with someone's hands pushing him, and a faceless person in scrubs pulling his oxygen tank alongside him. The man glares at David, revealing to the young boy the suffering of old age.

After finding out David has lost his shoes and driving him home in silence, his parents confront him, asking if he thinks they're made of money. His mom takes it one step farther, backhands him, and sends him to bed without supper to dream of the fetus in the jar.

The fourth panel of the sequence in which David's grandmother scalds his hands is perhaps the most frightening of all—you can see both a scowl and a smile on her face in her reflection in the bathroom mirror. This is David's first experience—at least the first one he shows us—of someone experiencing pleasure while inflicting pain.

David's thoughts after his grandmother burns him are the first time we see him internalize other people's dissatisfaction with him. When people tell you all the time that you're stupid/worthless/annoying, it's hard not to start to tell yourself those things, even if they're not true.

In which David's dad prolongs David's suffering to help lessen his own. If his wife is happy, she makes the whole family suffer less.

Not only can David no longer speak, he has a huge scar that will further separate him from other people. He has not one, but two physical differences now, meaning there are two things that were inexcusable for his parents not to tell him.

David, too, was driven mad by X-rays. He, too, was damaged by an experimental procedure that he thought would cure him, but which nearly killed him. The scientist lost his vision; David lost his voice.

Under extreme stress and deceit, David starts to lose it. We begin to wonder if his fantasies are actually delusions—for example, does he really see his therapist as the White Rabbit? It adds a level of tension to the story that wasn't there before (just in case it wasn't already tense enough.)

David dreams that he enters a church, where he finds a smaller door. He goes through a series of smaller and smaller doors until he finally crawls into a giant, bombed-out temple. If ever there was a metaphor for suffering, bombed-out guts is it.