“At any rate, they were strange fellows, these bohemians. They lounged around doing nothing and told you they were working; they were frightfully miserable and yet would tell you that they were perfectly happy. They had more troubles than others but seemed to bear them better, as if they fed on suffering.”

“There were no judgments to be made, yet out of necessity one had to select. Beyond good and evil was all right in theory, but to go on living one had to select: some were kinder than others, some were simply more interested in you, and sometimes the outwardly beautiful and inwardly cold were necessary. The kinder ones fucked better, really, and after you were around them a while they seemed beautiful because they were.”

“Happiness does not lie in amusement; it would be strange if one were to take trouble and suffer hardship all one's life in order to amuse oneself”

“Jerome said, It's like, a family doesn't work anymore when everyone in it is more miserable than they would be if they were alone, You know?”

“Happiness is often presented as being very dull but, he thought, lying awake, that is because dull people are sometimes very happy and intelligent people can and do go around making themselves and everyone else miserable. He had never found happiness dull. It always seemed more exciting than any other thing and capable of as great intensity as sorrow to those people who were capable of having it.”

“But there were times when you felt miserable and you wanted to feel better, and other times when you felt miserable and you figured you would just keep on feeling miserable.”