Where do you draw the line between actions carried out due to an internal need and actions that were nothing more than a slim version of one ceremony or another that help us define our emotions?

The difference is simple: happy people look at their lives and see a series of choices. Miserable people see only a series of sacrifices.

Perhaps when you helped someone to achieve happiness that you yourself would no longer experience, you also gained a small piece of that happiness.

Most of the big things in the world didn’t happen because someone was particularly wise, brave, or talented, but because there was someone who didn’t give up.

You’re not desperate, you’re not even really alone. You’re longing...

I think you’ll be satisfied if you become disappointed in yourself,′ she said quietly. ‘It would further support the conclusion that you’ve already drawn anyway. It would reinforce your negative opinions about yourself. You don’t do enough and then become angry at yourself for not doing enough.

First of all, you are secret agents. Except all the others are first of all agents and then secondly secret, but you are first of all secret and to a certain extent, also agents.

It’s strange, she thought, how we’re able to turn one specific thing into everything that drives us in life, and how we convince ourselves that without this thing there is no meaning in anything. And it’s even stranger how quickly we get used to the opposite thought.

Everything had to happen quickly now, before she changed her mind. Before she felt optimistic again. Half-depressed people always worried that hope would catch them unprepared, and all that despair would go to waste.

Our role is to be exactly on the border, to stand in the gray area between fate and free will, and to play Ping-Pong there.