In misery's darkest cavern known, His useful care was ever nigh Where hopeless anguish pour'd his groan, And lonely want retir'd to die.

Rejection and privilege, happiness and woe—no one felt more concretely than Yakov how interchangeable opposites are, how short the step from one pole of human existence to the other.

You came to me to learn the Pleasure of Life and the Pleasure of Art. Perhaps I am chosen to teach you something much more wonderful, the meaning of Sorrow and its beauty.

Everyone here is in a lot of pain, and as they say, hurting people hurt people. Part of your recovery

Some people think that in order to be happy they must avoid all suffering, and so they are constantly vigilant, constantly worrying. They end up sacrificing all their spontaneity, freedom, and joy.

I lost my father. He had diabetes and high BP and so he died of kidney failure.

A teardrop on earth summons the King of heaven.

The reality of the human condition is such that, according to Porter (and I agree), we must "salvage our fragments of happiness" out of life's inevitable sufferings.

If we learned to float in sorrow rather than thrash about like a drowning emotional victim, We might find that it can be used to set us free.

My greatest disappointment is that I believe that those of us who went through the war and tried to write about it, about their experience, became messengers. We have given the message, and nothing changed.

'Sizwe' is the beginning of protest theatre; 'Nothing But The Truth' is post-apartheid South Africa.

If you can recognize and accept your pain without running away from it, you will discover that although pain is there, joy can also be there at the same time. Some say that suffering is only an illusion or that to live wisely we have to "transcend" both suffering and joy. I say the opposite. The way to suffer well and be happy is to stay in touch with what is actually going on; in doing so, you will gain liberating insights into the true nature of suffering and of joy.