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“I should have learned this, she thought. I wanted to learn fire, and pain, but I should have learned people.”

“And when the Patrician was unhappy, he became very democratic. He found intricate and painful ways of spreading that unhappiness as far as possible.”

“Why bother inflicting enormous pain on yourself when sooner or later Life would certainly get around to doing it for you?”

“Happiness is something you lay siege to, it is a battle like a game of go. I will take hold of all the pain and snuff it out.”

“Come, pain, feed on me. Bury your fangs in my flesh. Tear me asunder.
I sob, I sob.”

“There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes to where life is not painful; nor is there a port of call where it is possible to forget.”

“My idea of the modern Stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.”

“I was starting to come to grips with the fact that I had created a lot of pain and suffering around me, not just within me.”

“For how can you remember the feel of pleasure or pain or choking emotion? You can remember only that you had them.”

“No matter how much bullying they inflict on my body, as long as I have this hope, I can endure any pain.”

“Relief is a wonderful emotion, highly underrated. In fact, I prefer it to elation or joy. Relief lets the air out of the Tire of Pain.”

“How much of this truth can I bear to see and still live
unblinded?
How much of this pain
can I use?”

“Heaven has no taste."
"Now-"
"And not one single sushi restaurant."
A look of pain crossed the angel's suddenly very serious face.”

“I can't understand why people use religion to hurt each other when there's already so much pain in the world.”

“Existence is this, I thought, a start of joy, a stab of pain, an intense pleasure, veins that pulse under the skin, there is no other truth to tell.”

“I was not wounded in any part of my body, but I had never experienced such intense pain, such a ripping of the nerves, such an ache of the heart.”

“There is, though, nothing that prepares us for the worst things in our life. There is nothing you can do to stop the shock, or buffer the pain.”

“I was guilty and irritated and full of love and pain. I wanted to kick him and I wanted to take him in my arms.”

“Well, while I'm here I'll do the work — and what's the work? To ease the pain of living. Everything else, drunken dumbshow.”