User blog comment:Angel Bridge/blog/@comment-31635856-20171030012423/@comment-995426-20171030030143

It means that, life is full of experiences, and a lot of them are bad ones. You can't have a happy life without unhappy moments in it. Even when life is lived to its fullest, at best, overall, a life is bittersweet.

The quote is from "Kirby and the Warp Crystal". It takes place during the early part of Mirage volume 1 when the turtles were still living in the building with April. But in "Kirby and the Warp Crystal", April had rented out a space in the building's basement to, a human artist. Kirby discovered the Warp Crystal there, which, when attached to a pencil, enabled an artist to draw an image and have it (temporarily) come to life as if by magic. The turtles are supposed to stay away from the tenant, but and Kirby meet and become friends. I can't completely remember how the story goes, but during some hijinks with the Warp Crystal, Kirby becomes permanently trapped in another world to save Don. Having lost the friend he just made, the only consolation Don is a drawing that Kirby left behind.

File:KirbysNote.jpg

This idea has also a recurring theme in Mirage TMNT. Archie TMNT sometimes dabbled in this theme too. No one ever gets everything they want, and successes often come at a price, sometimes more than anyone would bargain for. And sometimes life is just absolutely cruel and vicious to you for seemingly no reason, and all you can do is endure and try not to be completely psychologically destroyed by the experience. But whatever happens, the bad experiences are always a part of you, and you can't have a life free of them. Everything in the past has happened and cannot be undone, and all there can be is to move forward with your life and make the best of it however you can.
 * lost his master and his wife  when they were killed by .  They had been the only family he had known.
 * The turtles lost their and for years their only home to a  attack.
 * They discovered and bonded with, but then after more than a year of happy life with her, the (led by the recently revived Oroku Saki) discovered they were living in the Second Time Around building, and attacked it and destroyed their home, forcing them to flee for their lives.  On Christmas Day during holiday preparations, no less.
 * In "Sons of the Silent Age", the turtles get an uncomfortable reminder that they are the only four members of their race, and there are no females, effectively making them an extinct race by default.
 * In "City at War", Splinter was trapped inside an abandoned industrial cooling tower with a broken leg for two months, with only the to keep him company.  To survive, Splinter had to...eat other rats alive, under the knowledge that they would eat him if they were similarly starving.  And Splinter continued cannibalizing on rat flesh for the rest of the time he was trapped there.  Splinter regained enough strength to free himself, but this genuinely traumatized him for some time.
 * Also in "City at War", met Gabrielle, an already pregnant woman in Colorado.  They fell in love, got married, and Casey planned to adopt Gabe's baby and the two would start a family together.  But Gabe died in childbirth, and Casey immediately became a single father to  on the same day he became a widower.
 * In "Darkness Weaves", 13-year-old Shadow was rescued from the Sisterhood by Uncle, but in the process her best friend Sloane, who had become part of the Sisterhood, was killed, and the Sisterhood's leader Lilith put a hit out on Shadow. So suddenly, in the dead of night, April and Casey packed Shadow's belongings, and she left the only life and home and parents and social life she had ever known to go live with her Grandfather Splinter at the  in the middle of nowhere.  Much worse things have happened to other members of her family, but it was especially alienating to a teenage girl who was already deeply alienated.  As she finished her teenage years, she matured and considered it a growth and learning experience.
 * In Mirage volume 4, while still living on the farm with Shadow, Splinter...died. No one murdered him.  There was no warning.  He just had a heart attack, fell to the floor and the life left his body within seconds.  In a way, it was a death with dignity, as he died of natural causes in a life of retirement.  But sometimes, when a loved one dies, the family they leave behind can never quite be the same again.
 * Splinter's death pushed April to reconnect with her own family albums, and she discovered that a drawing of her existed before she was supposed to have been born. With 's help, April learnt a disturbing truth&mdash; and  couldn't have another baby after, so her father used the Warp Crystal he had discovered (the same one Kirby would later discover) to draw a baby girl...but that wasn't April.  Since the drawings had a way of disappearing after a while after the drawings naturally degraded, her parents bonded with and abruptly lost multiple children.  April was the final attempt, and this time her father reinforced the drawing with ink to make it last, and April would the one who wouldn't disappear.  This alone was disturbing enough to her, but it also explained why she could never get pregnant by Casey&mdash;she wasn't technically human.  April withdrew from her life and became ever more reckless, and her relationship with Casey started to fray.  So April shaved her head bald and went on a long cross-country motorcycle sabbatical to figure herself out, not telling the rest of her family that she actually intended to find a remote spot where she could die.  Though April did eventually return to New York, she could never be the same again, and it's not known how much longer she lived before she would inevitably disappear like every other Warp Crystal creation.
 * Also in volume 4, tried to cope with his father's death by throwing himself into some work, and became an -licensed tour guide for aliens visiting Earth.  On his first assignment, he was to guide the Styracodon Regenta, Seri.  Though in his thirties, Mikey was still playful like a teenager, and he and Seri ditched her Styracodon bodyguards to go touring the New England coast without a chaperon.  Mikey and Seri had a one-night stand together, and Seri immediately conceived and laid fertilized eggs&mdash;her children with Michelangelo.  When the bodyguards found them and the eggs, they savagely beat Mikey, and secretly carted him and the eggs off-world to an extrajudicial Styracodon prison, where Mikey would be tortured and starved for weeks with only a blind  Azokk as his friend.  On top of this, when he next encountered Seri, she pretended not to know him, and let Mikey rot in the prison.  Azokk helped Mikey escape, but the attempt cost Azokk his life.  After making his way across an alien planet's countryside with no gear, Mikey was detained by T'Zirk's Terrors, a Triceraton squadron that had been sent to rescue Azokk.  Upon learning Azokk was already dead, they immediately evacuated the planet.  Later, Mikey's testimony would be instrumental in convincing the  to launch a war of extermination against the Styracodons.  And perhaps most tragically, after all the trauma and torture and heartache Mikey had gone through, his spirit had been broken and he had become bitter and hateful, and he became an enthusiastic genocidal maniac, wanting to kill every Styracodon in existence and get revenge on Seri.  Last we heard from volume 4, Mikey was already complicit in the deaths of countless millions.  Even if there's a way back for him from that moral chasm, he'll have to live with everything he's experienced and done for the rest of his life.
 * In "Dark Shadows", Renet revealed to Raphael that, if he chooses to become Shadow's sensei and teach her ninjutsu, she would (in all likelihood) eventually become a murderous rogue ninja after being disowned by the rest of her family after an accident where she permanently blinded Donatello in both eyes. Years later, there is a time when civilization has all but collapsed, and adult Shadow has no family left, and Casey and April are both implied to be dead or gone, and she is desperately searching for a now-mentally-ill Uncle Raphael who has taken to liven a feral existence in the wilderness.  Their meeting is acrimonious, with Shadow full of too much bitter baggage, and Raph unwilling or unable to forgive or even love his niece anymore.  They bicker, and then fight, and in exactly the kind of moment Raph trained her for, Shadow acts quickly and permanently blinds one of Raphael's eyes.  After this, the two part completely estranged.  The alternative to this fate?  Raph could decide not to be Shadow's sensei, but she would join Karai's Foot Clan, and eventually be murdered at a young age by a .  With all his options bad, Raph chooses to become Shadow's sensei anyway, knowing well the tragedy and alienation that are still likely to happen.  Showing these possibilities to Raph is also traumatic to Renet, who never quite feels all right again after every single time she shows someone their bad multiple choice futures.
 * In "Swan Song", a middle-aged had found his one true soulmate in Raven Shadowheart, and they effectively lived as husband and wife.  But one day, Raven...was murdered.  And just like that, she was gone, and she would never come back.  Leo spent much of the rest of his life trying finding peace in life after her death, becoming a Buddhist holy man.  One day he faced his Raven's killer, intending to forgive him.  But the unrepentant Complete Carnage mocked him by killing another innocent, and in his rage, Leo killed him.  This did not give him closure, and in fact had dirtied his spirit and undone so much progress he had done.  By the time Leo was at least a century old, he had regained the progress he lost, and became a living Buddha.  He died alone, but this no longer mattered because he had purged himself of all worldly attachments.
 * When first mutated, his girlfriend Candace Fine wouldn't handle the change, and she left him.  Years later, long after Mondo had joined the, Mondo and Candy chanced meeting each other again.  Candy had deeply regretted her choice for a long time, and she and Mondo decided to get back together, finally accepting what he had become.  But practically the next day, Mondo and the rest of the Mutanimals&mdash;, , , ,  and , were ambushed by the , and all massacred in a blaze of automatic gunfire before being abandoned on a beach in pools of their own blood.  Candy witnessed the entire thing; she had finally found Mondo again, and now he was gone forever, and she felt she would never be all right again after what happened.   also heard it happen, and he had to mourn the first real friends he had ever known.  In a sick maneuver,  used his powers of illusion to pose as Mondo.  Candy was relieved to see him alive again, only to be told by Null that Mondo is dead and in hell, and she also would be.  Null kidnapped Candy to Maligna's hive and brainwashed Candy to become his plaything, and it was strongly implied (as far as an Archie Comics publication could) that this involved her being forced to sexually service Null.  The turtles and Slash were finally able to infiltrate Maligna's hive, defeat Null and  and rescue Candy, but Slash stayed behind to ensure everyone else could escape, knowing it would mean his certain death.  As friends mourned the Mutanimals and Slash, Candy had to live with losing Null, and the fact that someone else had sacrificed himself to save her, and with whatever Null had done together while in his captivity.