“It's not a problem. There are people out there with much worse problems than mine."-Cynthia"Doesn't make yours any more fun to bear."-Liza"No. But it does help with the self-pity."- Cynthia”

“Furthermore, worrying about people and problems doesn't help. It doesn't solve problems, it doesn't help other people, and it doesn't help us. It is wasted energy.”

“I think of so many people who are no more, and I pity them. Yet they are not so much to be pitied, for they have solved every problem, beginning with the problem of death.”

“It doesn't take any effort to dream. It's a lot easier than looking at the problems in front of you and figuring out what you're going to do about them. But all you're doing is putting your problems up on a shelf for later, right? That doesn't make them go away.”

“If there is one thing worse than self-pity, it was other people's pity.”

“Cynthia had been on friendly terms with an eccentric librarian called Porlock who in the last years of his dusty life had been engaged in examining old books for miraculous misprints such as the substitution of "1" for the second "h" in the word "hither." Contrary to Cynthia, he cared nothing for the thrill of obscure predictions; all he sought was the freak itself, the chance that mimics choice, the flaw that looks like a flower; and Cynthia, a much more perverse amateur of misshapen or illicitly connected words, puns, logogriphs, and so on, had helped the poor crank to pursue a quest that in the light of the example she cited struck me as statistically insane. ("The Vane Sisters")”