If you’re someone who is always on the lookout for the next, best self-help book you might be in luck with the soon-to-be-released Words of Inspiration…? by husband and wife team Fran & Fran Teschler, or the “Frans” as they’re known to those that know them.

While spiritual themselves, critics have suggested maybe these weren’t the best two people to write a book of inspiration as the quotes and passages included therein are often tinged with doubt, critical of the reader, and leave the reader feeling bereft of hope.

For instance, the first page of the introduction begins as follows:

Your personality is a facade that you’ve unknowingly constructed because you are ignorant and consumed with fear.

There is no author attributed to the quote so we can only assume it is the Frans at work here. In a chapter on meditation, entitled “Sit if You Want, We Don’t Care” they say the following:

Meditation is important if you don’t want to fall into a hell realm for eons with hell beings tearing your limbs apart and feeding your own flaming limbs to you while worms eat your face.

It’s a tough read. The Frans clearly have some knowledge of the state of reality but their delivery could use some work, as seen in the title for their chapter on love and romance: The one you love is just a pile of shit and bones.

And they preempt any criticism of the book by telling you in the foreword that if you are reading their words you have karma with them and if you feel negatively about anything in the book then you “need to let it go or it’ll just perpetuate for many lifetimes afterward and frankly we don’t want to see you or anyone else ever again.”

Still, hard to argue with this gem:

You are an actor in a play nobody wants to see.