“I was happy about different things. I was happy because someday I'd be walking across this bridge looking at this city, owning some piece of it, being valuable here.”

“Here's what I think I'm having trouble with: this is what happiness is. When I was a kid, I thought I'd just get happier and happier as I got older, and have more things to be happy about. I based this theory on observation of select adults. The problem with my results is that I couldn't tell the difference then between happy and fake-happy. Now I know you pretend to be just frigging ecstatic over everything, maybe because you're so glad it's not worse.”

“I probably said something about being happy for him, because I was happy for him, although to be happy for someone else doesn't mean that you are happy for yourself.”

“In his or her own way, everyone I saw before me looked happy. Whether they were really happy or just looked it, I couldn't tell. But they did look happy on this pleasant early afternoon in late September, and because of that I felt a kind of loneliness new to me, as if I were the only one here who was not truly part of the scene.”

“I walked across a bridge that doesn't exist. And after that, being scared just didn't seem so important anymore.”

“Happiness means different things at different times. First, we think it's about being with a special person. Then we think it's about being special. Finally we find it's about being.”