“Happiness is like coke — something you get as a by-product in the process of making something else.”

“I'm thinking of a queer feeling I sometimes get, a feeling that I've got something to say and the power to say it -- only I don't know what it is, and I can't make use of the power. If there was some different way of writing...Or else something else to write about.”

“I can sympathize with people's pains, but not with their pleasure. There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness.”

“Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.”

“One can’t have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for. You’re paying for it, Mr. Watson - paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty.”

“Not quite. I'm thinking of a queer feeling I sometimes get, a feel that I've got something important to say and the power to say it—only I don't know what it is, and I can't make any use of the power.”

“he had been making an unsuccessful effort to write something about nothing in particular”