“How wonderful to be alive," he thought. "But why does it always hurt?”

“If I'm dead," he murmured. "Why does it hurt so much?”

“If he was a good man, how could he leave me? So he must not be a good man. But if he isn't good, then why does it hurt so much to lose him? Is it just my pride that's wounded?”

“I wonder how Admat can be everywhere. Is he in my sandal? Or is he my sandal itself? Why would a god bother to be a sandal? Does he wear shoes or sandals himself, invisible ones?”

“I wonder if everyone who faces death hurts like this. It's as though for the first time I realize how much just being alive makes my body ache. But I don't want that ache to stop.”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you.” “Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit. “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.” —MARGERY WILLIAMS”

“How alive is thought, invisible, yet without thought there is no sight.”

“Why does the brain retain the memory of the hurt from yesterday?”

“I wondered if I was a monster. Not the kind that [Edward] thought he was, but the real kind. The kind that hurt people. The kind that had no limits when it came to what they wanted.”

“Garcia wondered why people with JESUS stickers on their bumper always drove twenty miles per hour under the speed limit. If God was my co-pilot, he thought, I'd be doing a hundred and twenty.”