The Notebook of Suffering's Practice

1. Deception is strategy; strategy is deception.

2. Anyone can worship; but how many can digest what they worship?

3. We carry nothing but a chest full of sorrow, yet we parade it—this we have, that we have...so much, so much!

4. The childless couple's eyes, heavy with despair, never see it—that for countless mothers and fathers, having a child is the world's singular sorrow.

5. In a man's darkest hour, even the candle's flame will burn his hand.

6. The finest person in the world will sometimes, sitting beside a wretched one, wish to trade fates.

7. People say time heals all wounds. Perhaps it does—but then how is it that the man who wept when he broke his toy can sit silent when his heart breaks?

8. There exists a marvelous and ancient technique for forgetting sorrow: dissecting another's.

9. One day, at last, we see it—we never once had the time to look at ourselves.

10. Life's reckoning should be settled each day; because each day the account grows muddled anew, and we must patch it together, telling ourselves, "It adds up. Mine adds up!"