“Grace is rhwe absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incogruity.”

“Darkness is the absence of light. Happiness is the absence of pain. Anger is the absence of joy. Jealousy is the absence of confidence. Love is the absence of doubt. Hate is the absence of peace. Fear is the absence of faith. Life is the absence of death.”

“She was fully, painfully aware that very rarely did midnight strike in two hearts at once, very rarely did midnight arouse two different equal desires, and that any dislocation in this, any indifference, was an indication of disunity, of the difficulties, the impossibilities of fusion between two human beings.”

“She should have remembered that people have given everything they own, everything they are, to be taken care of, and to have their pain gone. It's the lure of cults: the promise of a good family; it's what people think love is, but love isn't absence of pain, it's a hand to hold while you're going through it. ”

“The thing about opium is that it makes pain or difficulty unimaginable.”

“True Joy is not the absence of pain but the sanctifying, sustaining presence of the Lord Jesus in the midst of the pain”