People who praise illness as bringing out the best in people ought to have their heads examined. Pain forces you to think about yourself, directs your interest to your own body and what is happening to it. You don't reach out benevolently, filled with good will for others. You don't seem to care enough. Pain makes you a little person, not a big one, and not a nice one, except perhaps in the case of saints, and I've never known one.

Put out the light (ed. Dodd Mead, 1976) - ISBN: 9780396073529