“No sadness is greater than in misery to rehearse memories of joy.”

“There is no greater misery than false joys.”

“The joy you bring us is so much greater than the sadness we feel about your illness.”

“I know that pain is the most important thing in the universes. Greater than survival, greater than love, greater even than the beauty it brings about. For without pain, there can be no pleasure. Without sadness, there can be no happiness. Without misery there can be no beauty. And without these, life is endless, hopeless, doomed and damned. Adult. You have become adult.”

“There were sins whose fascination was more in the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they brought, or could ever bring, to the senses.”

“I'm hurling all the little joys against the greater sadness. The sadness is a giant weight. It presses down. Its mean: "What's the point?”