It's always coldest before the warm.

You know what gives me the courage to keep on living? The courage to love myself a little? It's having a whole bunch of friends who really give a goddamn. When you share pain, there's less of it, and when you share joy, there's more of it.

And I repeat: if there is anything that can divert the land of my birth from its current stampede into the Stone Age, it is the widespread dissemination of the thoughts and perceptions that Robert Heinlein has been selling as entertainment since 1939.

Pain shared is pain lessened; joy shared is joy increased. Thus do we refute entropy.

Shared joy is increased, shared pain is lessened.

We did make use, from time to time, of candles, neckties, scarves, shoelaces, a little water-color paintbrush, her hairbrush, butter, whipped cream, strawberry jam, Johnson’s Baby Oil, my Swedish hand vibrator, a fascinating bead necklace she had, miscellaneous common household items, and every molecule of flesh that was exposed to air or could be located with strenuous search.

To be human : to strive in the face of the certainty of failure.