“Either way, the whole thing was a pain in the porpoise.”

“If you want to live your whole life free from pain,you must either be a god or a corpse.”

“Everyone is down on pain, because they forget one important thing about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it. Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it's a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.”

“...either the gods are there whether you believe or not, or exist only as a function of the belief, so either way you might as well ignore the whole business...”

“No wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise.”

“It was a small thing, but it was a thing, and things have a way of either dying or growing, and it wasn’t dying.”