Cheat your landlord if you can -- and must -- but do not try to shortchange the Muse.
Whether you like it or not, you are committed to the human endeavor. I cannot ally myself with such a purely negative goal as avoidance of suffering. Suffering is a chance you take by the fact of being alive.
There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve.
Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.