“The English feel schadenfreude even about themselves.”

“To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish.”

“Schadenfreude is so nutritious.”

“80% of people's problems are about how they feel about themselves.”

“There are shades of schadenfreude. My favorite shade is bright red, from a haughty spanking.”

“I remember learning German - so beautiful, so strange - at school in Australia on the other side of the earth. My family was nonplussed about me learning such an odd, ugly language and, though of course too sophisticated to say it, the language of the enemy. But I liked the sticklebrick nature of it, building long supple words by putting short ones together. Things could be brought into being that had no name in English - Weltanschauung, Schadenfreude, sippenhaft, Sonderweg, Scheissfreundlichkeit, Vergangenheitsbewältigung.”