The physical shock took away the pain of being.

That's what opium does to suffering: makes it of hypothetical interest only.

The function of music is to liberate in the soul those feelings which normally we keep locked up in the heart.

I don't find life unbearably grave. I find it almost intolerably frivolous.

Life can be lived at a remove. You trade in futures, and then you trade in derivatives of futures. Banks make more money trading derivatives than they do trading actual commodities.

I breathed and breathed and did feel some calmness enter in, though it was, as always, shot with a sense of loss. Loss and fear.

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