“Love is raw, and violent, and instantaneous. You don’t fall in love; you get trampled by it.”

Look at Van Gogh’s paintings: there’s as much joy in them as there is pain. Suffering is only a single color, and by itself it’s boring.

Love attacks. It sneaks up like a pride of lions or a pack of hyenas and eats your heart out while you watch.

I once heard some idiot on the radio saying that all great art has suffering as its dominant theme, and that the greatest artists are only able to create because they suffer immensely in their own lives. What a bunch of bullshit.

It seems to be that loneliness is a small price to pay for peace and quiet.

Love is the bully on the playground who takes your lunch money and gives you a black eye in return, the arsonist who burns your house down with you in it, the witch who lures you into her home with candy and boils you alive for dinner.

Temptation, if it is not to conquer, must not fall like a bomb against another bomb of instantaneous moral explosions, but against the strong walls of an impregnable fortress strongly built up, stone by stone, beginning at that distant day when the foundations were first laid.

Implicit and instantaneous obedience from the child to the parent, not only for the peace of the home, but for the highest good of the child.