“You can't ever guess at life, at pain. All pain is real, and all pain is personal. It's the most personal thing we have. It eats each of us differently.”

“There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away.”

“...she acknowledged each person's nearness to the dead and helped the group in its struggle for order-who grieved most, whose pain was most real-because in life there is always hierarchy, and it is frankly not profitable to remain modest and anonymous, not even at a funeral.”

“Have you ever experienced a pain so sharp in your heart that it's all you can do to take a breath? It's a pain you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy; you wouldn't want to pass it on to anyone else for fear he or she might not be able to bear it. It's the pain of being betrayed by a person with whom you've fallen in love. It's not as serious as death, but it feels a whole lot like it, and as I've come to learn, pain is pain any way you slice it.”

“We forget that sometimes there is something greater than our pain. That's the pain of the person who loves us, who couldn't protect us from that pain.”

“Where was it ever promised us that life on this earth can ever be easy, free from conflict and uncertainty, devoid of anguish and wonder and pain? … The purpose of life is to matter, to be productive, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.”