Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.
My interpretation to the meaning of this quote is that which gets hurt and offended by words is not a real entity to begin with. The ego gets bruised and injured if someone says something negative towards it, but the ego is a mind made fiction. The ego is a mental construct of who you are and that is not a real entity. That isn't to say that you want to get disrespected or want to choose to be insulted, but it's an insight into the fact that, that which is being hurt and bruised by these comments is not a real thing. You are not hurt, the ego is hurt, but you are not the ego.
Secondly, the anger which arises from the bruising of an ego is something that feels ultimately so real and powerful. However, if you examine it, it is the creation of an element which have already noted is a fiction: the ego. The ego gets bruised and injured from negative words directed at it, and from that stems anger. So a unreal element, the ego, is creating something from being injured. In that sense anger is just a byproduct of something that isn't real in the first place.
To take it a step further, you really cannot even pinpoint the person who is making the comment. Where does that person really reside? Is he or she located in the head? The face? The eyes? The brain? There is no person you can actually point to and pinpoint your anger towards. Is it different neurons firing inside the cranium where the person is? You have no real target to direct your anger towards. There is a good chance the ego of the other person, which a false identity, is lashing out at your ego, another false identity, and anger is stemming from that. So a non-real entity apparently inside another person is attacking another fake identity, and that second fake identity is having anger steam off it. You are watching this all take place, but often are getting involved because have trained ourselves to be strongly identified with the ego.
Looking at it from this perspective, you are able to step back from the dramatic turmoil which stews inside you if someone says something bad about you. After a careful examination, it's like a bunch of apparitions and shadows and dream-like elements floating around which are not real. That is when you become more of an observer of the dramatic chaos, and not a participator in it. You are the watcher of the art, and not the frenzied piece of work itself.
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