Dark Hollow (Charlie Parker, #2)

by John Connolly

“Suffering isn’t enough, Bird,” said Angel softly. “So he’s suffered: big fuckin’ deal. Get in line with the rest of us suckers. It’s not enough to suffer, and you know that. What matters is that you understand that others suffer, and some of them suffer worse than you could ever do. The nature of compassion isn’t coming to terms with your own suffering and applying it to others: it’s knowing that other folks around you suffer and, no matter what happens to you, no matter how lucky or unlucky you are, they keep suffering. And if you can do something about that, then you do it, and you do it without whining or waving your own fuckin’ cross for the world to see. You do it because it’s the right thing to do.

All I know is that you’re becoming a compassionate man, Bird. That’s not the same as pity, or guilt, or trying to pay off some debt to fortune or to God. It’s feeling other people’s pain as your own, and acting to take that pain away. And maybe, sometimes, you have to do bad things to do that, but life doesn’t balance easy. You can be a good man and perform bad actions, because that’s the nature of things. People who believe otherwise, well, they’re just timeservers, because they spend so much time wrestling with their consciences that nothing gets done, and nothing changes, and the innocent and the defenseless, they just keep getting hurt. In the end you do what you can, maybe what you have to do, to make things better. Your heart isn’t going to be weighed against a feather in the next life, Bird. My guess is they use something heavier, otherwise we’ll all end up in hell.”