“No one can usurp the heights...But those to whom the miseries of the worldAre misery, and will not let them rest.”

“The rest of us can find happiness in misery.”

“Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery. But it can be used the wrong way round. It can be used for a kind of blackmailing. Those who choose misery can hold joy up to ransom, by pity.”

“It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable”

“Those around you can have their novellas, sweet, their short stories of cliché and coincidence, occasionally spiced up with tricks of the quirky, the achingly mundane, the grotesque. A few will even cook up Greek tragedy, those born into misery, destined to die in misery. But you, my bride of quietness, you will craft nothing less than epic with your life. Out of all of them, your story will be the one to last.”

“Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.”