You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don't live the only life you have, you won't live some other life, you won't live any life at all. - James Baldwin

But I know about suffering; if that helps. I know that it ends. I ain’t going to tell you no lies, like it always ends for the better. Sometimes it ends for the worse. You can suffer so bad that you can be driven to a place where you can’t ever suffer again: and that’s worse.

Perhaps the turning point in one's life is realizing that to be treated like a victim is not necessarily to become one. (1984)

In overlooking, denying, evading this complexity — which is nothing more than the disquieting complexity of ourselves — we are diminished and we perish; only within this web of ambiguity, paradox, this hunger, danger, darkness, can we find at once ourselves and the power that will free us from ourselves. It is this power of revelation that is the business of the novelist, this journey toward a more vast reality which must take precedence over other claims.