“Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you.”

“This was a good dinner enough, to be sure, but it was not a dinner to ask a man to.”

“In the end, like so many beautiful promises in our lives, that dinner date never came to be.”

“I'm no good at dinner parties. I feel very uneasy at them.”

“It is perfectly reasonable to despair of a world where the Nobel Committee gives the Peace Prize to a man running a war.”

“Farewell!
For in that word, that fatal word,—howe'er
We promise, hope, believe,—there breathes despair.”

“We gave you a perfectly good language and you f***ed up.”

“High I. Q., good compatibility index, superior education—everything that makes a person pleasant and easy and interesting to have around.”

“I am a trial lawyer…. Matilda says that at dinner on a good day I sound like an affidavit.”

“Only a soul full of despair can ever attain serenity and, to be in despair, you must have loved a good deal and still love the world.”