“Happiness is the ability to recognize it.”

“The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry;The books that we would like to read we are ashamed to buy;The books that people talk about we never can recall;And the books that people give us, oh, they're the worst of all.”

“Actions lie louder than words.”

“Power is the ability to take one's place in whatever discourse is essential to action and the right to have one's part matter.”

“Carolyn and I struggled with how or if to forgive while we dealt with the impact of the clinic's actions. Kevin Anderson helped us by introducing the idea of intolerant forgiveness: the ability to forgive the person who committed the error, but not the actual mistake.”

“The antithetical or perhaps mirror image to sadness is the experience, similarly unique to one's late years, of a swift, mysterious wave of happiness, also causeless, but of much shorter duration. I cannot remember a time, before my sixties, when the consciousness of happiness would sweep over me and, like a shower of cold water when one is desperately overheated, offer me a passing sensation very close to glee.Both sadness and fleeting happiness relate, I think, to mortality, to the consciousness of being old and of nearing the end of life. . . these sensations . . . surge up from the unconscious, to be a gift of long life or fortunate old age. Both sadness and happiness, but sadness more, are related to the fact that nothing of all this will endure for long. [p. 179]”

“Relationships are complicated, but happiness in a relationship isn't: It's just wanting exactly what you have. Wanting something else is dispiriting.”