“Music makes things hurt less.”

Source: The Star Rover

Source: The God of Small Things

Source: Flipped

Variant: I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much... because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting.
Source: Stranger in a Strange Land

Source: Beach Music

Source: Summerhill (1960), p. 12
Context: You cannot make children learn music or anything else without to some degree converting them into will-less adults. You fashion them into accepters of the status quo – a good thing for a society that needs obedient sitters at dreary desks, standers in shops, mechanical catchers of the 8:30 suburban train – a society, in short, that is carried on the shabby shoulders of the scared little man – the scared-to-death conformist.

Source: The Transit of Venus