“There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.”

“Sometimes grief is a comfort we grant ourselves because it's less terrifying than trying for joy. Nobody wants to admit it. We'd all declare we want to be happy, if we could. So why, then, is pain the one thing we most often hold on to? Why are slights and griefs the memories on which we choose to dwell? Is it because joy doesn't last but grief does?”

“The memory was so painful that tears came into my eyes, and a pang of grief tore through my body.”

“I didn't emerge from the cocoon of my past to become an uninhibited, emotionally healthy butterfly. Nothing is ever that easy. Sometimes grief is a comfort we grant ourselves because it's less terrifying than trying for joy. Nobody wants to admit it. We'd all declare we want to be happy, if we could. So why, then, is pain the one thing we most often hold on to? Why are slights and griefs the memories on which we choose to dwell? Is it because joy doesn't last but grief does?”

“Great joy doesn't obliterate grief. Both can be encompassed at the same time.”

“It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.”