“A sure way to lose happiness, I found, is to want it at the expense of everything else.”

“I wonder if it's possible to have happiness without it being at someone else's expense.”

“Lena: I just want to be happy. I just want to be normal, like everybody else.Alex: Are you sure that being like everybody else will make you happy?”

“I just want to be normal, like everybody else." "Are you sure that being like everybody else will make you happy?”

“I spit on your happiness! I spit on your idea of life--that life that must go on, come what may. You are all like dogs that lick everything they smell. You with your promise of a humdrum happiness--provided a person doesn't ask much of life. I want everything of life, I do; and I want it now! I want it total, complete: otherwise I reject it! I will not be moderate. I will not be satisfied with the bit of cake you offer me if I promise to be a good little girl. I want to be sure of everything this very day; sure that everything will be as beautiful as when I was a little girl. If not, I want to die!”

“That no matter what i did, I would always be missing something else. And the only way to live, the only way to be happy, was to make sure the things I didn't miss meant more to me than the things I missed.”