“What came first - the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person? ”
“You never understood, why we did this. The audience knows the truth: the world is simple. It’s miserable, solid all the way through. But if you could fool them, even for a second, then you can make them wonder, and then you... then you got to see something really special... you really don’t know?... it was... it was the look on their faces..”.
“After a while I came to an accommodation with this and stayed alive, a pathetic denizen of a half-world that was as much of my own making as it had been of Borden’s, or so I came to believe. I went through the winter in this miserable state, a failure even at self-destruction.”
“A thousand girls would sell their own mothers to be in your shoes, and yet here you are, miserable and sulking like a child. So tell me, girl. What is your sad little heart pining for?”
“They tried their best to be happy, to go about their usual ways. But their usual ways included Sylvester and they were always reminded of him. They were miserable. Life had no meaning for them any more.”
“The Rodent, for that was the boat’s name, proved to be very well made and very well suited to the sea. And Amos, after one miserable day of seasickness, proved to be a natural sailor, very well suited to the ship.”
“The King sighed so heavily, and seemed so low-spirited, and sat down so miserably, leaning his head upon his hand, and his elbow upon the kitchen table pushed away in the corner, that the seventeen Princes and Princesses crept softly out of the kitchen, and left him alone with the Princess Alicia and the angelic baby.”
“in a way they didn’t cost anything at all. After the last present had been opened and the last candle on the tree blown out, they played charades and hide-and-seek all over the house. It was all great fun; but everybody suddenly thought about the time. This was the end, and Christmas Day was over for another year, which was a miserable feeling.”