"Your ears you keep, so that every shriek of every child shall be yours to cherish—every babe that weeps in fear at your approach, every woman that cries ‘Dear God, what is that thing?’ will reverberate forever with your perfect ears."
— William Goldman (The Princess Bride)

"Only cowards torture women."
— Patricia Briggs (Raven's Shadow)

"Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. Bitter. Sweet. Alive."
— Joanne Harris (Chocolat)

"Not returning phone calls is the severest form of torture in the civilized world."
— Marisha Pessl (Special Topics in Calamity Physics)

"إذا خفيت عنا الحكمة في العذاب أحيانا.. فلأننا لا ندرك كل شيء ولا نعرف كل شيء، ولا ندرك من القصة إلا تلك المرحلة المحدودة بين قوسين اسمها الدنيا.. أما ما قبل ذلك ومابعد ذلك فهو بالنسبة لنا غيب محجوب.. ولذا يجب أن نصمت في احترام ولانطلق الأحكام.."
— مصطفى محمود

"Always mystify, torture, mislead, and surprise the audience as much as possible."
— Don Roff

"Some nights are made for torture, or reflection, or the savoring of loneliness."
— Poppy Z. Brite

""The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul.""
— John Calvin

"The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?"
— George Orwell (1984)

""I release the pain,
of a thousand tortured souls.""
— Karen Anderson Miller

"It would be advisable to think of progress in the crudest, most basic terms: that no one should go hungry anymore, that there should be no more torture, no more Auschwitz. Only then will the idea of progress be free from lies."
— Theodor W. Adorno

"Schmerz ist Wahrheit; alles andere wird angezweifelt."
— J.M. Coetzee (Warten auf die Barbaren)

"Die Folter war [...] praktizierte Schutzpflicht des Souveräns für seine Untertanen."
— Heribert Prantl (Der Terrorist als Gesetzgeber. Wie man mit Angst Politik macht)

"Der Lebensschutz des potentiellen Opfers soll mehr wiegen als die Menschenwürde des potenziellen Täters."
— Heribert Prantl (Der Terrorist als Gesetzgeber. Wie man mit Angst Politik macht)

"Foltern zerstört die zivile Basis des Zusammenlebens."
— Heribert Prantl (Der Terrorist als Gesetzgeber. Wie man mit Angst Politik macht)

"Anyone even remotely suspect was interrogated, because interrogation is by far the most effective method of speedily banishing inappropriate thoughts from the mind.
"
— Olli Jalonen

"Some say that it is lack of imagination which makes men and women brutes. May it not be power of imagination? The interest of torturing is lessened, is almost lost, if we can not be the tortured as well as the torturer."
— Robert Smythe Hichens (the Return of the Soul and Other Stories)

"It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
"
— Thomas Jefferson

"Some people may say, "Well, no wonder this man left Islam. He was upset because he was tortured by Muslims." Yes, it is true. When I was tortured in the name of protecting Islam, I did not make a distinction between Muslims and the teachings of Islam. So the torture was the final push that separated me from Islam. But the fact is that I had been questioning Islam for years before I went to prison. My questions were not based on the actions of Muslims but on the actions of Muhammad and his followers and on the teachings of the Quran. Being in prison just pushed me a little more quickly to where I was already going."
— Mark A. Gabriel (Jesus and Muhammad: Profound Differences and Surprising Similarities)