“Is God a cruel bastard or what, to make love so painful?”

“It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature and everlasting beauty of monotony.”

“God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.”

“It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.”

“The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.”

“Nothing satisfies God but the voluntary sacrifice of love. The pain of Christ gave God no pleasure — only the love that was tested by pain — the love of perfect obedience.”

“Do you know how cruel your God can be, David. How fantastically cruel? …Sometimes he makes us live.”

“But these visions of Johanna, they make it all seem so cruel.”

“A hurt body and mind aren't just like a dictatorship; they are a dictatorship. There is no tyrant as merciless as pain, no despot so cruel as confusion.”

“It was so much easier when I didn't want anything. Not getting what you want can make you cruel.”