“Is anyone anywhere happy?”

“But I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure at all. How did I know that someday―at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere―the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?”

“I don’t care about anyone, and the feeling is quite obviously mutual.”

“And there is the fallacy of existence: the idea that one would be happy forever and aye with a given situation or series of accomplishments.”

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.”

“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”

“I thought how strange it had never occurred to me before that I was only purely happy until I was nine years old.”