"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and
sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only
pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a
refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If
you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it.

"But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to
lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold, we can no longer
describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy."

-Ursula Le Guin, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas," *The Wind's
Twelve Quarters*