“Ben wore the same goofy smile as in the photo. Take that, new guy! I can make him happy too!”

“Ben made me laugh. I was attracted to his attraction for me: the way he smiled for instance, whenever he saw me, that goofy kind of grin that hijacks the face of the helplessly smitten.”

“Amy adored both the new look and the new person it allowed her to be. Following the photo shoot, she wore her bruises to the dry cleaner and the grocery store. Most people nervously looked away, but on the rare occasions someone would ask what happened, my sister would smile as brightly as possible, saying, 'I'm in love. Can you believe it? I'm finally, totally in love, and I feel great.”

“Life is a difficult thing to understand. It makes us too much happy and suddenly takes away the happiness. But we should smile in every phase of the life.”

“So, for her, I'll try. I'll trust. I'll ... open myself. I'll ... be this guy I've never been before and don't even known how to be—this goofy "in love" guy, this guy who takes care of his woman, this guy who gives more than he takes.”

“But perhaps that's why we take snaps...to provide false evidence to underpin the false claim that we were happy. Because the thought that we weren't happy at least for some time during our lives is unbearable. Adults order children to smile in the photos, involve them in the lie, so we smile, we feign happiness.”