Charlie Munger didn’t shy away from pain—he faced it head-on. “Life is brutal sometimes,” he said. “Go ahead and cry. Just don’t quit.” That grit came from experience. He lost his 9-year-old son to leukemia, endured personal and professional setbacks, and still rose to become vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. “You can’t bring back the dead… You have to soldier through it,” he told CNBC. Munger believed in realism, not sugarcoating. “The iron rule of life is everybody struggles,” he said. “If you soldier through, you can get through almost anything. And it’s your only option.” Even late in life, his wit stayed sharp. On aging, he joked, “I no longer want to catch a 200-pound tuna. It’s just too goddamn much work.” On wealth, he was blunt: “Buffett gave most away. I passed mine on to my descendants.” Marriage, money, grief—Munger treated them all with honesty. “You can cry all right,” he said. “But you can’t quit.”