“It is only when our consciences become tangled that the truth begins to hurt.”

“There are only so many times that you can utter ‘It does not hurt’ before it begins to hurt even more than the hurt. You become enlightened of the feeling of feeling hurt, which is worse, I am certain, than the existent hurt.”

“Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.”

“Man must be free of it all, of his bad conscience and of the bad salvation from this conscience in order to become in truth the way.”

“A conscience that is only sluggish, may submit to truth when it happens to meet with it: but a conscience under the seductions of passion, will not submit to it without great difficulty, and will devise some pretext, some expedient, for resisting the voice of truth that openly rebukes it.”

“Phone calls like ours only happen when you've spent several years hurting and being hurt, until every work you utter or hear becomes coded and loaded, as complicated and full of subtext as a bleak and brilliant play.”

“… there are only some many times you can utter "It does not hurt" before it begins to hurt even more than the hurt.”

“It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.”

“Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts—not to hurt others.”

“When we give ourselves in love we become our most vulnerable. We are never safe. We become open to disappointment and hurt.”