The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.

A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword.

Though I knew I shouldn't have cared, the words still hurt like pinches. And pinches can be very painful when done in the same place many times in a row.

Hit it! With words like Blood, Soldier and Mother...

Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can hurt like hell.

Though I knew I shouldn't have cared, the words still hurt like pinches, and pinches can be very painful when done in the same place many times in a row.

But they woke him with words, their cruel bright weapons.

An occasional short sentence can carry a
tremendous punch. It stays in the reader’s ear.

She struck out like a wounded animal.

Alas! when angry words begin Their entrance on the lip to win; When sullen eye and flushing cheek Say more than bitterest tone could speak; And look and word, than fire or steel, Give wounds more deep,—time cannot heal;
And anger digs, with tauntings vain,
A gulf it may not pass again.

That's the thing about pain," Augustus said, and then glanced back at me. "It demands to be felt.

IfI wanted to eat an apple, and someone punched me in the stomach, taking away my appetite, then it was this punch that I originally wanted

i use pain to push me to greatness

I'm pretty good at inventing phrases- you know, the sort of words that suddenly make you jump, almost as though you'd sat on a pin, they seem so new and exciting even though they're about something hypnopaedically obvious. But that doesn't seem enough. It's not enough for the phrases to be good; what you make with them ought to be good too...I feel I could do something much more important. Yes, and more intense, more violent. But what? What is there more important to say? And how can one be violent about the sort of things one's expected to write about? Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly-they'll go through anything. You read them and you're pierced. That's one of the things I try to teach my students-how to write piercingly. But what on earth's the good of being pierced by an article about a Community Sing, or the latest improvement in scent organs? Besides, can you make words really piercing-you know, like the very hardest X-rays when you're writing about that sort of thing? Can you say something about nothing?