“I had the fleeting thought then that we are each of us pathetic in one way or another, and the trick is to marry a person whose patheticness you can tolerate.”

“To be the child of a conficted or reputed witch was inherently dangerous; in one pathetic case in Lorraine a young couple were both accused, and it emerged that they had decided to marry after attending an execution at the stake of their respective parents, 'so that they would have nothing to reproach one another with.”

“The most pathetic person in the world is some one who has sight but no vision.”

“I sent a lot of publishing ideas to my publisher, about 30 of them. Each time except 3, i got a "rejection letter". This is basically what a rejection letter is like:Hello Pathetic Moron,We read your book. It sucked. Don't send us another one. If you do, we will run over your grandmother with a bus. Don't Do It.From, Your Publisher”

“For a split second they stared at each other. A fleeting, lasting moment. One person noticing another person out of a whole crowd of strangers.”

“We had pathetically simple dreams:to do meaningful work that we could be proud of, to be together, and to be happy.”