“After all, isn't the purpose of the novel, or of a museum, for that matter, to relate our memories with such sincerity as to transform individual happiness into a happiness all can share?”

“Inasmuch as art preserves, with the promise of happiness, the memory of the goal that failed, it can enter, as a 'regulative idea,' the desperate struggle for changing the world. Against all fetishism of the productive forces, against the continued enslavement of individuals by the objective conditions (which remain those of domination), art represents the ultimate goal of all revolutions: the freedom and happiness of the individual.”

“We all have different paths in life. As in purpose, so is happiness. As our purposes differ, so do our roads to happiness differ, though we may have common grounds.”

“The purpose of life is not to be happy—but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.”

“Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people. There is no more mistaken path to happiness than worldliness.”

“Pain is easy to write. In pain we're all happily individual. But what can one write about happiness?”