You need characters who want things. They want love, they want recognition, they want happiness.

The women I know who have children and have careers, they seem to be very happy. They love their children and they love their jobs. But happiness comes out of being willing to do your work in your twenties to find out who you are, what you love.

Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.

Suspicion is far more to be wrong than right more often unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness.

The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.