He had discovered that the choice between self-love or love of something other than self offers no escape from suffering either way, it is merely a choice between two woundings, of the pride or of the heart.

I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: "He is nothing but a boy -- a little boy!

What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles, when it is their own wickedness that brings them sufferings worse than any which destiny allots them.

The healing is my working out my salvation. The need constant because my desire for seperateness constantly wrestles with my need for oneness with Jesus. The search for Jesus is bigger, deeper and agonizing.

We are breeding creatures incapable of surviving in any place other than the most artificial settings. We have focused the awesome power of modern genetic knowledge to bring into being animals that suffer more.

Honesty, vulnerability and a good amount of courageous faith allows you to cry out in your bewilderment and not lose your belief in the process. These things allow you to wrestle your faith rather than lose it.

It isn't discomfort, or dis-ease as he put it. It's this aching, throbbing, god-awful incurable pain - and it's known as life. When will the doctors learn: It isn't death that's the disease.

Painting completed my life. I lost three children and a series of other things that would have fulfilled my horrible life. My painting took the place of all this. I think work is the best. (Frida Kahlo, p. 157)

Whether you like it or not, you are committed to the human endeavor. I cannot ally myself with such a purely negative goal as avoidance of suffering. Suffering is a chance you take by the fact of being alive.

The pain wants to eat me away. I wish I could have one without the other, but that's the problem with being alive. You don't usually get to choose the measure of suffering or the degree of joy you have.

And St. Francis said: 'My dear son, be patient, because the weaknesses of the body are given to us in this world by God for the salvation of the soul. So they are of great merit when they are borne patiently.

Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism.

It's a difficult truth to face that some people choose to define themselves by the pain they feel or the wrongs they've suffered. They're not going through hard times so much as making all times hard.

Goodbye, Room." I wave up at Skylight. "Say goodbye," I tell Ma. "Goodbye, Room."Ma says it but on mute.I look back one more time. It's like a crater, a hole where something happened. Then we go out the door.

If pain must come, may it come quickly. Because I have a life to live, and I need to live it in the best way possible. If he has to make a choice, may he make it now. Then I will either wait for him or forget him.