You learn to present dark ...

You learn to present dark things without including their ability to harm, treasuring them for what they are.
 John Darnielle

Quotes from the same author

I worked the AV counter at the Roland Heights public library in the '80s. My best story from the library was the time a couple asked for a recommendation, and I recommended Raising Arizona and they absolutely hated it. They came back hungry for blood. I was on my lunch break and my boss came out and said, "Hey kid, you need to come talk to these people. They totally hate Arizona." And he said, "Arizona's a dog; nobody gets that movie.
 John Darnielle
Anything that is within you is a gift. To be able to take possession of that and say, "Whatever it is, I am bigger than it," is to learn to cherish even the hard and painful things.
 John Darnielle
Take dance music: I like enough of it and its history to be able to say a word or two about this or that record, but I'm nobody's authority.
 John Darnielle
I have a hunger for justice, but art is a place I've always enjoyed being able to be free - to live in worlds that you don't have to be thinking about that all the time. I don't see myself writing Upton Sinclair books. My books are to entertain, although to me, entertainment is to make you feel sadness or to get in touch with your own pain - or fear, or to remember somebody who has gone missing from your life. That's my calling.
 John Darnielle
What's funny is that people think, "Well there has to be something more than wrestling, because wrestling has such an absurd quality to it." But if you tell a love story, people don't ask what else is in there. They say, "Oh, it's just a love story." All stories have many levels, but these ones show their hand and say, "You might want to look a little deeper.
 John Darnielle