“Sympathy from strangers can be ruinous.”

“Like the trains, she's never on time and always departing.Sympathy from strangers can be ruinous.”

“Sounds of sympathy from the crowd. Unrequited love they can relate to.”

“An old walrus-faced waiter attended to me; he had the knack of pouring the coffee and the hot milk from two jugs, held high in the air, and I found this entrancing, as if he were a child's magician. One day he said to me - he had some English - "Why are you sad?""I'm not sad," I said, and began to cry. Sympathy from strangers can be ruinous."You should not be sad," he said, gazing at me with his melancholy, leathery walrus eyes. "It must be the love. But you are young and pretty, you will have time to be sad later." The French are connoisseurs of sadness, they know all the kinds. This is why they have bidets. "It is criminal, the love," he said, patting my shoulder. "But none is worse.”

“...it's the sympathy of strangers that's often the most affecting, the words and gestures of people who have no reason to be kind that touch us the most.”

“As for asking favors or handouts, no.'But you'll take them from a stranger.'He looked me straight in the eye. 'The stranger can keep going and pretend not to hear.”