“If you can learn to endure pain, you can survive anything. Some people learn to embrace it—to love it. Some endure it through drowning it in sorrow, or by making themselves forget. Others turn it into anger. But Ansel let her pain become hate, and let it consume her until she became something else entirely—a person I don’t think she ever wished to be”

“There is no way to learn endurance other than simply to endure. We can’t learn it in principle or in theory; only pain can teach it to us.”

“Pain is the feeling. Suffering is the effect the pain inflicts. If one can endure pain, one can live without suffering. If one can withstand pain, one can withstand anything. If one can learn to control pain, one can learn to control oneself. ”

“It’s not the pain that’s inflicted on us by others that destroys us. It’s the pain we let inside our hearts that does that. Don’t let the human’s anger become yours. It can drive you mad if you do. (M'Adoc)”

“Yesterday you asked me what the purpose of life is. I've thought about that ever since. I think it's to do good no matter what life throws at you, to not let the pain turn you bitter. It's something we have to learn, something we have to make ourselves become...Little kids don't have to learn it. They already know.”

“She wanted Kristen to do all the horrible things she said she would do to her and to have her physical pain from Kristen’s hate replace her mental pain from her father’s love. Pain that comes from the outside was much easier to endure. The wounds heal, the scars go away, and it’s over. She could move on. She would live on and forget her pain. The wounds caused by her father, that festered inside Simone’s heart, mind, and blood would never heal. She would never be able to just move on and forget the scars.”