Secrets to Happiness

Ordinarily, I am the person who falls in love quickly and somewhat inappropriately and then goes on to destroy what is a good thing. That's always been my style. So, you know: I get it. And I feel right now the way I imagine all those guys felt with me. And I have to say, for the first time in my life, I feel something approaching compassion for them.

You've got to let people be just, you know, people. Everyone does bad things sometimes, for all sorts of reasons. You've got to at least understand.

It was one of those perfect New York October afternoons, when the explosion of oranges and yellows against the bright blue sky makes you feel like your life is passing through your fingers, that you've felt this autumn-feeling before and you'll probably get to feel it again, but one day you won't anymore, because you'll be dead.

Betsy hadn't had sex, actual; sex-sex, full sex, in two hundred and fifty-three days. She decided on her thirty-seventh birthday that she wouldn't sleep with anyone unless it was in the context of a committed relationship which had some sort of future, and she was only gradually coming to the realization of what happens when a woman her age makes a decision like that: she never has sex again.

I don't want to go back into that dressing room and take off my boots and my pants and start putting on jeans only to discover that the ones you brought me are all too tight, and then when I ask for the next size up, be informed that they're the biggest size you carry. I can't take that today. Seriously, I'll blow my head off. So look at me, look at my ass, look at my gut, take it all in, and then tell me honestly if you anticipate we're going to have a problem.

There was a guy roasting chestnuts on the street corner, and the smell wafted over, hinting at the coming Winter, but in a good way, in the way that makes you think about Christmas and snow days and fires crackling away in fireplaces.

It was like the time her sister suggested she read Emily Dickinson to the tune of Gilligan's Island. Once certain thoughts got into your head, you couldn't get rid of them.

It was awful, but it's over. And now I feel like I'm finally coming up for air." "Yes, well, it's been a very stressful time for both of us," said Leonard. "How has it been stressful for you? said Holly. "I had that move." Holly just looked at him. "What," said Leonard. "You moved apartments" said Holly.

More and more often these days days, though, Holly found herself thinking that perhaps what God wanted was not to be feared or obeyed or even to be worshiped - but maybe God just wanted to be wondered about.

It's interesting said Jack. "What is?" "You believe in God." he said. You just don't believe that God is good.

Sometimes Holly could start to see the order in things, she got a glimmer of a pattern. And that thing everyone seems to say these days, about how things always happen for a reason- Holly was getting close to being willing to concede that that was maybe, possibly true.

Punish you for what?" said Jack. "Everything! Nothing. I don't know. That's the problem," said Holly. "That's what happens when you grow up the way I did. You spend the rest of your life just waiting for God to smite the shit out of you.

Somebody out of touch with reality, when she jumped she probably thought she’d fly.

(Everybody else seemed to be having a good time. She tried to remember what her therapist told her to do in situations like this.) Don't compare your insides to other people's outsides.