"I DON'T CARE!" Harry yelled at them, snatching up a lunascope and throwing it into the fireplace. "I'VE HAD ENOUGH, I'VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON'T CARE ANYMORE"
"You do care," said Dumbledore. He had not flinched or made a single move to stop Harry demolishing his office. His expression was calm, almost detached. "You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it."
— J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)

"Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world."
— C.S. Lewis

"Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever."
— Lance Armstrong (Every Second Counts)

"One thing you can't hide - is when you're crippled inside."
— John Lennon

"There is a saying in Tibetan, 'Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.'

No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that's our real disaster."
— Dalai Lama XIV

"I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom."
— Edgar Allan Poe

"One word frees us of all
the weight and pain of life:
That word is love. "
— Sophocles

"I know that pain is the most important thing in the universes. Greater than survival, greater than love, greater even than the beauty it brings about. For without pain, there can be no pleasure. Without sadness, there can be no happiness. Without misery there can be no beauty. And without these, life is endless, hopeless, doomed and damned.
Adult. You have become adult.
-- From the title story "Paingod"
— Harlan Ellison (Paingod and Other Delusions)

"Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional."
— Dalai Lama

"The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity."
— Graham Greene

"The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"Adventures are all very well in their place, but there's a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain."
— Neil Gaiman (Stardust)

"Forgiveness has nothing to do with absolving a criminal of his crime. It has everything to do with relieving oneself of the burden of being a victim--letting go of the pain and transforming oneself from victim to survivor."
— C R Strahan

"Moral wounds have this peculiarity - they may be hidden, but they never close; always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart."
— Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo)

"And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor, Shall be lifted- nevermore!"
— Edgar Allan Poe

"Loneliness sometimes gives me a quantity of creativeness - you're drinking another glass of wine and you're feeling even worse. Art doesn't work without pain; art also exists for compensating pain."
— Till Lindemann

"I know what you are learning to endure. There is nothing to be done. Make sure nothing is wasted. Take notes. Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In life, knowledge of poisons is essential. I've told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to."
— Janet Fitch (White Oleander)

"There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful."
— Fernando Pessoa (The Book of Disquiet)

"There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt."
— Erma Bombeck

"“I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine.”"
— Henry Rollins

"Some pains are physical, and some pains are mental, but the one that's both is dental."
— Ogden Nash

"To some, the image of a pale body glimmering on a dark night whispers of defeat. What good is a God who does not control his Son's suffering? But another sound can be heard: the shout of a God crying out to human beings, "I LOVE YOU." Love was compressed for all history in that lonely figure on the cross, who said that he could call down angels at any moment on a rescue mission, but chose not to - because of us. At Calvary, God accepted his own unbreakable terms of justice.


Any discussion of how pain and suffering fit into God's scheme ultimately leads back to the cross. "
— Philip Yancey

"My mother groaned, my father wept,
into the dangerous world I leapt."
— William Blake

"And then it was, that grief and pain made themselves known to me as never before. Note this, because I knew the full absurdity of Fate and Fortune and Nature more truly than a human can bear to know it. And perhaps the description of this, brief as it is, may give consolation to another. The worst takes its time to come, and then to pass. The truth is, you cannot prepare anyone for this, nor convey an understanding of it through language. It must be known. And this I would wish on no one in the world."
— Anne Rice (Pandora)

"I thought I am kissing pain and pain belongs to You as happiness never does. I love You in Your pain. I could almost taste metal and salt in the skin, and I thought, How good you are. You might have killed us with happiness, but You let us be with You in pain."
— Graham Greene

"Falling in love is painful on the knees."
— Bon Jovi

"The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities."
— Sophocles

"…the love we most cherish will, of necessity, bring us pain. Because that love is like the setting of a body with broken bones. But I want to stage the setting. I want to direct all scenes."
— Rebecca Wells (Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood)

"“The pain inside is small compared to the love I have for you.”"
— Melinda Pitkin

"Don't make light of any man's pain."
— Patricia Briggs (When Demons Walk)

"...when we say we're looking for a spiritual adviser, we're really looking for someone to tell us what to do with our bodies. Decisions of the flesh. We forget to learn from pleasure as well as pain."
— Anne Michaels (Fugitive Pieces: A Novel)

"We tend to forget at times that it is the little ones, the children, who do suffer the greatest hurt. If we cannot comprehend why certain sorrows are visited upon us, how on earth can they?"
— Sharon Kay Penman (The Sunne in Splendour)

"Je tiefer sich das Leid in euer Sein eingräbt, desto mehr Freude könnt ihr fassen."
— Kahlil Gibrán

"How could you give me life, and take from me all the inappreciable things that raise it from the state of conscious death? Where are the graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart? What have you done, oh, Father, What have you done with the garden that should have bloomed once, in this great wilderness here? Said louisa as she touched her heart."
— Charles Dickens (Hard Times)

"Anticipating pain was like enduring it twice. Why not anticipate pleasure instead?"
— Robin Hobb (Renegade's Magic)

"Schmerz ist Wahrheit; alles andere wird angezweifelt."
— J.M. Coetzee (Warten auf die Barbaren)

" I am no theologian, and do not have the answers to these questions, and one of the reasons I enjoy the animals on the farm so much is that they don't think about their pain, or question it, they accept it and endure it, true stoics. I have never heard a donkey or cow whine (although I guess dogs do).
I told my friend this: pain, like joy, is a gift. It challenges us, tests, defines us, causes us to grow, empathize, and also, to appreciate its absence. If nothing else, it sharpens the experience of joy. The minute something happens to me that causes pain, I start wondering how I can respond to it, what I can learn from it, what it has taught me or shown me about myself. This doesn't make it hurt any less, but it puts it, for me, on a more manageable level. I don't know if there is a God, or if he causes me or anybody else to hurt, or if he could stop pain. I try to accept it and live beyond it. I think the animals have taught me that.
The Problem of Pain is that it exists, and is ubiquitous. The Challenge of Pain is how we respond to it. "
— Jon Katz

"Vergnügen ist Mangelware, aber an Schmerz ist heute überall ranzukommen."
— J.M. Coetzee (In the Heart of the Country)

"“You’re life is a pained one until he shows up… then it’s the most wonderful.”"
— Melinda Pitkin