An extract from "Malone Dies"
Physical pain, on the contrary, seemed to help him greatly. And one day rolling up the leg of his trousers, he showed Macmann his shin covered with bruises, scars, and abrasions. Then producing smartly a hammer from an inside pocket he delt himself, right in the middle of his ancient wounds, so violent a blow that he fell down backwards, or perhaps I should say forwards. But the part he struck most readily, with his hammer, was the head, and that is understandable, for it too is a bony part, and sensitive, and difficult to miss, and the seat of all the shit and misery, so you can rain blows upon it, with more pleasure than on the leg for example, which never did you any harm. It's only human.
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