But there's always suffering, Pudge. Homework or malaria or having a boyfriend who lives far away when there's a good-looking boy lying next to you. Suffering is universal. It's the one thing Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims are all worried about.

There’s no need to suffer. Which I’d argue is just a fundamental misunderstanding of the human predicament, but okay.

Well to be fair, I said, I mean she probably can't handle it. Neither can you, but she doesn't have to handle it. And you do.

Fights were recounted, battles won amid wars sure to be lost; hope was clung to; families were both celebrated and denounced; it was agreed that friends just didn't get it; tears were shed; comfort proffered.

Sembrava passata un'eternità, un'eternità che sembrava breve ma allo stesso tempo infinita. Alcuni infiniti sono più grandi di altri infiniti.

the problem is not suffering itself or oblivion itself but the depraved meaninglessness of these things, the absolutely inhuman nihilism of suffering.

We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors . . . But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters.