“I let myself feel good and sorry for myself, but only for a second. Daddy always said that the most useless of all human emotions was self-pity.”

“I curled myself into a ball and cried quietly, doing that thing that only young people can do, namely, feeling sorry for myself. Once you're past thirty you lose that ability; instead of feeling sorry for yourself you turn bitter.”

“When I'm feeling proud of myself, I should remember to ask myself why I think I am of any value at all. I have done nothing that a hundred thousand other people couldn't do, and most of them would probably do it better, and they probably wouldn't feel so self-important about it. I should always be ashamed of myself.”

“If I let myself care, all I'll feel is pain.”

“Self-pity, he said, is the most demoralizing of all vices.”

“I don't have time to feel sorry for myself. I've got to think.”

“I began to suspect that Daddy had been right all along: the only hope I had of changing the world was to change myself first.”

“Self-pity is an ignoble emotion, but we all feel it, and the orthodox critical line that it represents some kind of artistic flaw is dubious, a form of emotional correctness.”

“What's so wrong with feeling sorry for myself? Better that than trying to get other people to feel sorry for me.”

“…I have to be in this frame of mind where I’m feeling pity for myself, and feeling pity for the world. Once I’ve attained the summit of this, then I have to sit down and write…”