Pain is itself a god: the taskmaster of life. Pain cracks the whip and all that lives will move. The most basic instinct of life is to retreat from pain. To hide from it. If going here hurts, even a slug will for over there.
Pain can be power, too. Power to change things for the better. That's how change happens: someone hurts, and sooner or later decides to do something about it. Suffering is the fuel in the engine of civilization.
—Matthew Stover
