“Happiness is not a life without pain, but rather a life in which the pain is traded for a worthy price.”

“I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it.”

“It will hurt." said Petra. "But let's make the most of what we have, and not let future pain ruin present happiness.”

“She worked her toes into the sand, feeling the tiny delicious pain of the friction of tiny chips of silicon against the tender flesh between her toes. That's life. It hurts, it's dirty, and it feels very, very good.”

“Personal humiliation was painful. Humiliation of one's family was much worse. Humiliation of one's social status was agony to bear. But humiliation of one's nation was the most excruciating of human miseries.”

“The lives of all people flow through time, and, regardless of how brutal one moment may be, how filled with grief or pain or fear, time flows through all lives equally.”

“It is easy to say that you can adopt the whole human race as your children, but it is not the same as living in a home with a child and shaping all you do to help him learn to be happy and whole and good. Don't live your life without ever holding a child in your arms, on your lap, in your home, and feeling a child's arms around you and hearing his voice in your ear and seeing his smile, given to you because you put it into your heart.”