“What was that?" Rich combined the pain of a crooked arm with the indignity of a flicked ear. I could only hope the situation didn't escalate to the dreaded purple nurple.”

“If I were to assign a color combination to my love for you, it would be purple and brown, because you are a royal pain in the ass.”

“I was trying to explain my situation to myself. My situation was that I was in pain and nobody knew it, even I had trouble knowing it. So I told myself, over and over, You are in pain. It was the only way I could get through to myself. I was demonstrating externally and irrefutably an inward condition.”

“Words. Words. I play with words, hoping that some combination, even a chance combination, will say what I want.”

“There is, I am convinced, no picture that conveys in all its dreadfulness, a vision of sorrow, despairing, remediless, supreme. If I could paint such a picture, the canvas would show only a woman looking down at her empty arms.”

“He could hope for many things, though he had stopped doing so long ago. If one didn't hope, then disappointment didn't visit. Hoping meant you had somehting to live for, and living for something or someone else was asking for pain. -Nik”