The greatest create of power you have on earth, whether you are an angel, a spirit, a man or woman or child is to help others.

Oh, my darling, wish you were here! And my dark soul is happy again, because it does not know how to be anything else for very long, and because the pain is a deep dark sea in which I would drown if I did not sail my little craft steadily over the surface, steadily towards a sun which will never rise.

Whipping is fifty percent show and noise.

It's an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater lustre to our colours, a richer resonance to our words.

But the sky was never quite the same shade of blue again.

The truth is, laughter always sounds more perfect than weeping. Laughter flows in a violent riff and is effortlessly melodic. Weeping is often fought, choked, half strangled, or surrendered to with humiliation.

I am afraid of death. I believe nothing, and therefore like many who believe nothing I must make something, and that something is the meaning which I give my life.