“Beauty can pierce one like pain.”

“Think of your pain like a bunch of red roses, a beautiful thorn necklace. Everyone has one.”

“O, my Russia! O, wife! The long road is clear to us to the point of pain. Our road – like a Tatar arrow of ancient will has pierced our breast.”

“Pain is the feeling. Suffering is the effect the pain inflicts. If one can endure pain, one can live without suffering. If one can withstand pain, one can withstand anything. If one can learn to control pain, one can learn to control oneself.”

“My mother says that pain is hidden in everyone you see. She says try to imagine it like big bunches of flowers that everyone is carrying around with them. Think of your pain like a big bunch of red roses, a beautiful thorn necklace. Everyone has one.”

“It's not that pain equals art. It's that creativity has the power to look pain in the eye, and to decide to turn it into something better. ... The quest to transform pain into beauty is one of the great catalysts of artistic expression.”

“Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”

“All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”

“What seems nasty, painful, evil can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind.”

“His smile was like lightning in the darkness, blinding and beautiful and mysterious, and I wanted him so badly it was physically painful.”