Fool's Errand (Tawny Man, #1)

by Robin Hobb

Nor is there any special wisdom in injuring oneself over and over. What is your loyalty to that pain? To abandon it will not lessen you.

Life is a balance. We tend to forget that as we go blithely from day to day. We eat and drink and sleep and assume that we will always rise up the next day, that meals and rest will always replenish us. Injuries we expect to heal, and pain to lessen as times goes by.

So grief has always seemed to me, a time of waiting not for the hurt to pass, but to become accustomed to it.