“Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled but halved. No man is an island”

“Yes. We both have a bad feeling. Tonight we shall take our bad feelings and share them, and face them. We shall mourn. We shall drain the bitter dregs of mortality. Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled, but halved. No man is an island.”

“He was painfully shy, which, as is often the manner of the painfully shy, he overcompensated for by being too loud at the wrong times.”

“We build a shell around it, like an oyster dealing with a painful particle of grit, coating it with smooth pearl layers in order to cope. This is how we walk and talk and function , day in, day out. Immune to others’ pain and loss.”

“Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken.”

“Adventures are all very well in their place, but there's a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain.”

“There are three things, and three things only, that can lift the pain of mortality and ease the ravages of life. These are wine, women and song.”