“It is difficult to feel sympathy for these people. It is difficult to regard some bawdy drunk and see them as sick and powerless. It is difficult to suffer the selfishness of a drug addict who will lie to you and steal from you and forgive them and offer them help. Can there be any other disease that renders its victims so unappealing? Would Great Ormond Street be so attractive a cause if its beds were riddled with obnoxious little criminals that had “brought it on themselves?”

“The difficult thing isn't living with other people, it's understanding them.”

“It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.”

“Dangerous Helpfulness. There are people who want to make men's lives more difficult for no other reason than afterwards to offer them their prescriptions for making life easier -- their Christianity, for example.”

“Because of that she had never had enough energy to be herself, a person who, like everyone else in the world, needed other people in order to be happy. But other people were so difficult. They reacted in unpredictable ways, they surrounded themselves with defensive walls, they behaved just as she did, pretending they didn't care about anything. When someone more open to life appeared, they either rejected them outright or made them suffer, consigning them to being inferior, ingenuous.”

“...Difficult relationships come into our lives for a reason. No one would choose them, certainly. But if we let them, they can teach us how to be flexible with others and more forgiving.”