“what made you happy once might not make you happy now.”

“Happiness is what you choose to remember.”

“Everyone knew that if you divided reality by expectation, you got a happiness quotient. But when you invert the equation - expectation divided by reality - you didn't get the opposite of happiness. What you got, Lewis realized, was hope.”

“He knew that there was a difference between something that makes you happy and something thatdoesn’t make you unhappy. The trick was convincing yourself these were one and the same.”

“Whatever your father did was not this woman's fault. And if she made him happy, when I obviously didn't, then the last thing you should be doing is yelling at her.”

“Why hadn’t he realized this before? Everyone knew that if you divided realityby expectation, you got a happiness quotient. But when you inverted the equation-expectationdivided by reality-you didn’t get the opposite of happiness. What you got, Lewis realized, was hope.Pure logic: Assuming reality was constant, expectation had to be greater than reality to createoptimism. On the other hand, a pessimist was someone with expectations lower than reality, afraction of diminishing returns. The human condition meant that this number approached zerowithout reaching it-you never really completely gave up hope; it might come flooding back at anyprovocation.”

“You figured that the only way I'd be happy is if I did the things you thought would be best for me.”