Only parents and torturers and the janitors of holocausts are asked to stand the sound of so much human grief.

Novelists are stamina merchants, grinders, nine-to-fivers, and their career curves follow the usual arc of human endeavour.

People talked so foolishly, I thought, about the ennobling effects of suffering. No doubt the philosophy that tells you your soul grows through grief and sorrow is right--ultimately. But I don't think this is the case at first. At first, pain beyond a certain point merely makes you lifeless, and apathetic to everything but itself.

We bereaved are not alone. We belong to the largest company in all the world--the company of those who have known suffering.

There are places in the heart that do not yet exist; suffering has to enter in for them to come to be.

Grief causes suffering and disease.