Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes.

To experience real agony is something hard to write about, impossible to understand while it grips you; you're frightened out of your wits, can't sit still, move, or even go decently insane.

As if one's capacity for pain had anything to do with life's apportionment of agonies, Mr. Kimmelbrod thought. Such idiocy.

My heart had melted into something akin to a sensation of happiness, peace of mind one might even say, at the realization that I had now reached the very bottom of agony.

Shame internalized can lead to agony. Whereas shame let out can lead to freedom, or at least a funny story, which is a sort of freedom too.