“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.”

“Curving back within myself I create the world around me...”

“I saw that Haller was a genius of suffering and that in the meaning of many sayings of Nietzsche he had created within himself with positive genius a boundless and frightful capacity for pain.”

“I think the function of suffering is to let me know that my perception is skewed; what I’m doing is judging natural events in such a way that I am creating suffering within myself. For instance, you have pain over certain conditions, certain situations that occur. And if you just say ‘ok, here I am, I’m going to experience the pain,’ you don’t suffer. The resistance and the degree of the resistance to the natural phenomenon of life causes tremendous suffering.”

“I have come to realize that what is important is not my loss and the pain it caused but the fact that I have picked myself up (with help), taken the memories and the lessons, and becoming the woman they have wanted me to become.The fact that I have lost those I love is not what defines me. What defines me is the fact that I have survived and now live, despite the pain and with memory of their love.”

“Let go," he advised me, and I loosened my grip on his hands. "No, not of me," he said, smiling. "You can hold on to me as long as you want. Let go of the pain, Sookie. Let go. You need to drift away."It was the first time I had relinquished my will to someone else. As I looked at him, it became easy, and I retreated from the suffering and uncertainty of this strange place.”