Does madness bring creativity? Or does creativity cause madness? Can an artist create without the ups so high and the downs so low?

Sometimes grief is a comfort we grant ourselves because it's less terrifying than trying for joy. Nobody wants to admit it. We'd all declare we want to be happy, if we could. So why, then, is pain the one thing we most often hold on to? Why are slights and griefs the memories on which we choose to dwell? Is it because joy doesn't last but grief does?

There are many things I don't know, but quite a few I do. I know you can't be lost if you know where you are. I know that life is full of precious and fragile things, and not all of them are pretty. I know that the sun follows the moon and makes days, one after another. Time passes. The world turns, and we turn with it, and though we can never go back to the beginning, sometimes, we can start again.

Foolish. Stupid. I knew it. I knew my reaction was unreasonable, bu the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. Blaise Pascal said that, and I've always found it to be true.

We were broken, brittle and fragile. The question was, were we still precious to each other? Or, instead of everything falling into place, had it fallen into pieces?

It is such a secret place, the land of tears. That is what the narrator ofThe Little Prince says after the little prince argues with him the first time about matters of consequence. And he was right. My land of tears had been a secret for a very long time.

You know what they say. Best revenge is looking good, right?