“I do hereby and forever abandon abandoning all hope. Honestly, I give up on giving up. I'm just not cut out to be some hopeless, disillusioned wretch with no aspirations for the rest of the eternity, sprawled catatonic in my own feces on a cold stone floor. In all probability the Human Genome Project will, someday, find that I carry some recessive gene for optimism, because despite all my best efforts I still can't scrape together even a couple of days of hopelessness. Future scientists would call it Pollyanna Syndrome, and if forced to guess, I'd say that mine has been a way-long case of history chasing rainbows.”

“I'm afraid to hope but I can't help it, and the idea of hoping in this most hopeless of all places makes me want to cry.”

“God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right even though I think it is hopeless.”

“Unless we are able to make friends with outselves, there is no hope at all. If we abandon ourselves as hopeless, as villains, then there is no steppingstone.”

“I've given up men. It's true. At first, I was just going to give up attorneys, but that seemed immature - and far too exclusive, so I'm playing it safe and giving up all the penis-carrying humans.”

“No. Never. I have to try my best or I'll become worse and worse. Even if I can't make up with them. Even if they all ignore me. I still have to try my best.”

“My tea's gone cold, I'm wondering why I got out of bed at all
the morning rain clouds up my window and I can't see at all
And even if I could it'd all be grey, but your picture on my wall
it reminds me that it's not so bad
it's not so bad”

“Well, some people say I'm pessimistic because I recognize the eternal cycle of evil. All I say is, look at the history of mankind right up to this moment and what do you find?”

“I haven't decided if he deserved to eat bread made out of sticks or live in a rancid puddle, probably because I haven't made up my mind whether anyone deserves such treatment, though I suspect that the day a person gives up on the Geneva Conventions is the day a person gives up on the human race.”

“It's all going to go sometime. You can't take it with you. I'm not saying you should wake up every day with sunshine streaming out of your head. If I could get one day a month, I would be very grateful. But I don't want to sound like I'm complaining. I'm just figuring certain things out. It's taken me a while, and some things I could probably do without knowing.”