“Happiness is like a cat. If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you. It will never come. But if you pay no attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing up against your legs and jumping into your lap.”

“Cats, I always think, only jump into your lap to check if you are cold enough, yet, to eat.”

“You'll never truly be happy until you've found a place that you can call your own. A place that will be in your heart.”

“There is a kind of fallout that happens when you leave college. The classroom is a wonderful, if artificial, place: Your professor gets paid to pay attention to your ideas, and your classmates are paying to pay attention to your ideas. Never again in your life will you have such a captive audience.”

“Love always finds you, no matter how hard you try to avoid it. It knows your hiding places. It's smarter than you'll ever be.”

“I hated cats. I was a dog lover," Des says with a shrug. "What's the point of a cat? They're not affectionate. But that's because it's not my cat. I mean, your wife wouldn't jump on my lap. That's because she's your wife, not mine. Until you have your own cat, you really don't understand.”