“This is my perspective and has always been my perspective on life: I have a very grim, pessimistic view of it. I always have, since I was a little boy. It hasn’t gotten worse with age or anything. I do feel that it’s a grim, painful, nightmarish, meaningless experience, and that the only way that you can be happy is if you tell yourself some lies and deceive yourself.”

2008-10-11, Friday Night with Jonathan Ross

Oskar's grandmother to his grandfather after she told him of her pregnancy.
"My Feelings" (p. 180)
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)

Evelyn Collier, Chapter 15, p. 223
Source: 2009, The Best of Me (2011)

Hercule Poirot’s Early Cases (1974)
Source: The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966)

2010-, Ai Weiwei Does Not Feel Powerful, 2011

In his letter to Theo, from Cuesmes, 24 September 1880 - original manuscript of letter no. 158 - at Van Gogh Museum, location Amsterdam - inv. no. b156 V/1962, http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let158/letter.html
Van Gogh's copies (drawings) he made after the work of Rousseau have been lost
1880s, 1880
Context: First and foremost, the masterly etching, 'The bush', by Daubigny/Ruisdael. [ Daubigny's etching 'The bush', he made after Jacob van Ruisdael ].... I plan to do two drawings, either in sepia or something else, one of them after this etching [by Daubigny] — the other [etching, made] after T. Rousseau's 'The oven in Les Landes'. This latter sepia is already done — it's true — but if you compare it with Daubigny's etching, you'll understand that it becomes weak, even though the sepia drawing considered on its own may very well have a certain tone and sentiment. I have to go back to it and work on it again.... I couldn't tell you how happy I feel to have taken up drawing again. It had already been on my mind for a long time, but I always saw the thing as impossible and beyond my reach.

Source: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948), p. 14