Quotes & Sayings About Happy Relationships

Choosing a mate is not a matter of can they do the job, rather will they. A partner of "potential" doesn't make for a happy marriage. Their actions have to be in line with your needs. — Shannon L. Alder

What a happy woman I am, living in a garden, with books, babies, birds and flowers, and plenty of leisure to enjoy them. Sometimes I feel as if I were blest above all my fellows in being able to find happiness so easily. — Rosamunde Pilcher

A YEAR OR SO AGO I READ AN ARTICLE THAT SAID in the next five years we will become a conglomerate of the people we hang out with. The article went so far as to say relationships were a greater predictor of who we will become than exercise, diet, or media consumption. And if you think about it, the idea makes sense. As much as we are independent beings, contained in our own skin, the ideas and experiences we exchange with others grow into us like vines and reveal themselves in our mannerisms and language and outlook on life. If you want to make a sad person happy, start by planting them in a community of optimists. — Donald Miller

Traveling as much as I do, I get lonely sometimes. I have friends now in cities all over the world, so I get to be social, but it's hard to have the deep meaningful relationships, especially an intimate one. With my guy friends, I can show up once a month and go to dinner with them and they're happy. — Blake Mycoskie

Of all the variables in your life, your relationships may hold the greatest power to make you happy or miserable — Shane Eric Mathias

You let go of someone not because you no longer care, not because you no longer need and want them in your life, but because you understand that they will be happier someplace else. You will be happy someplace else. — Luminita D. Saviuc

What's the difference? You ask me
The difference is, a smile touches my lips
When I remember both the memory of you entering my life
And the memory of you leaving my life — Tammy-Louise Wilkins

Exemplar, n.
It's always something we have to negotiate- the face that my parents are happy, and yours have never been. I have something to live up to, and if I fail, I still have a family to welcome me home. You have a storyline to rewrite, and a lack of faith that it can ever be done.
You love my parents, I know. But you never get too close. You never truly believe there aren't bad secrets underneath. — David Levithan

Call me a bad private eye, but I came to the conclusion that nobody is happy with what they've got. You have a healthy relationship, then, you look for a spicy one. You have an unhealthy relationship, your struggle is to find a peaceful one. — Merce Cardus

Grow up, Bailey."
"That is precisely what I'm doing," Bailey says. "I don't care if you don't understand that. Staying here won't make me happy. It will make you happy because you're insipid and boring, and an insipid, boring life is enough for you. It's not enough for me. It will never be enough for me. So I'm leaving. Do me a favor and marry someone who will take decent care of the sheep. — Erin Morgenstern

I came out to my parents as gay, and then I realized, you know, four or five years later, that I wasn't really happy, no relationships were working, and there was something missing in my life, and you know, I was doing drag, performing and stuff, and I realized through that arc that I was much happier doing that. — Candis Cayne

One way [to recovery] would be by creating the best possible romance book or happy ending scenario for you ... out od your own experience. Another way would be to look at it as it is: a wake-up call to action to create a more humane world, without discrimination and sexism. — Elina Juusola

There are times I wish I was more conventional. I would get a husband and a baby and a big SUV in the 'burbs and be happy. But forging my own way - my career, my relationships with wonderful but troubled people - that's who I am. — Lauren Oliver

You can spend many nights and even have lasting relationships with women you have nothing in common with other than being happy and horny to see each other. It does not need to be more complicated than that, and it can definitely be accomplished without dating a woman for weeks. A few hours are often enough, and sometimes less than one hour is. — W. Anton

Things we had, like respect and trust, but also freely expressed desires and accountability to whatever degree it took to make both people happy. It took work, a willingness to fight passionately and fairly--out of bed, not just in it--commitment and honesty. It took waking up and saying each day, "I hold this man sacred and always will. He's my sun, moon, and stars."
It took letting the other person in; a thing I'd stopped doing. It took being unafraid to ask for what you wanted, to put yourself on the line, to risk it all for love. — Karen Marie Moning

You don't need human relationships to be happy, God has placed it all around us. — Christopher McCandless

We forget that God's primary goal ia not changing our situations or relationships so that we can be happy, but changing us through our situations and relationships so that we will be holy. — Paul David Tripp

What's the purpose of being single, if all your going to do is play game? What's the purpose of saying your single, when you're still chasing your Ex? What's the purpose of knowing you're single, if you're going to compare the new to your last? What's the purpose of being single, if your not going open up to let a person know you? What's the purpose of saying you're single, if you're going to let someone else decide on who you deal with? So before you say you're single! Ask yourself, are you're really single or someone else's back up plan. And if so, are you happy? — Jerome D. Williams

Over the course of my life I've had more than my fair share of romantic relationships with wonderful women, many moved on to live happy, healthy, and productive lives, and I'm pleased to say remain dear friends today. Sadly, there are a few who have chosen to rewrite history in an attempt to stay in the spotlight. I guess, as the old saying goes: You can't win 'em all! — Hugh Hefner

Now, a month later, I sit, foggy, a similar state of mind, in a different seafood restaurant with a locals-know-every-secret bar, two happy hour martinis downed, fidgeting with my napkin below the lip of the table, and I barely hear Wendy ask me another question. She brought a bag of them tonight. — Justin Bog

If I accept the fact that my relationships are here to make me conscious, instead of happy, then my relationships become a wonderful self mastery tool that keeps realigning me with my higher purpose for living. — Eckhart Tolle

There are two ways to ruin any chances of leading a happy life. The first is to chase a goal twenty-four hours a day, day after day, and gladly give up all the little laughs and joys that life has to offer in exchange for that ever-elusive moment of jubilation. The second way is far worse, in that it NEVER fails. You know what it is, Sam? Falling in love with someone who chases a goal twenty four hours a day. — Ali Sheikh

I don't believe in endings, happy or sad, so my relationships with you continue to this day. They are the kind of relationships you have with a pair of skis you know you'll never have to strap to yourself again. Maybe you never really liked skiing, but enjoyed being a person who could say, "Looks like I'll be hitting the slopes this weekend!" So you kept on even though it cost too much to get down a hill. Gave you windburn. I see nothing weird about keeping those skis in the basement. They offer a little nostalgia for crappier times. More importantly, they serve as a reminder that I no longer have to ski. Wake — Mary-Louise Parker

You can put all your effort in trying to make someone happy ... but there comes a time when we become tired of trying to fill a bucket that is leaking from the inside. — Steve Maraboli

I like marriage, family life and I wish to get married again. But opting out of an unhappy marriage was a duty toward myself & my future. — Rossana Condoleo

HOW DO YOU FIND THE RIGHT POSITION
TO LIE DOWN WITH PEOPLE
OR EVEN ANIMALS?
OFTEN ONE OF THE PARTNERS IS
SMOTHERED OR CONTORTED.
WHEN DONE PROPERLY, THOUGH,
EVERYONE IS HAPPY. — Jenny Holzer

People are basically the same the world over. Everybody wants the same things - to be happy, to be healthy, to be at least reasonably prosperous, and to be secure. They want friends, peace of mind, good family relationships, and hope that tomorrow is going to be even better than today. — Zig Ziglar

I can't be happy going out if it's not ... going anywhere. — Daria Snadowsky

Financial success is only partial success. — Maddy Malhotra

Happy will the house be in which the relationships are formed from character. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

She has no regrets; she knows now he could never have made her happy, even though he has, apparently, joined AA, is doing better. But sobriety is his journey, not hers; he needs to do it for himself, alone. Still, she misses him hugely, doesn't feel ready for another relationship yet. But as time passes, she hopes that she might be, eventually, with someone new, easier, kinder. — Sarah Rayner

Francis Spufford, using very contemporary idiom, calls for the same thing in this way. When discussing our sinfulness, he says: What we're talking about here is not just our tendency to lurch and stumble and screw up by accident, our passive role as agents of entropy. It's our active inclination to break stuff, "stuff" here including . . . promises, relationships we care about and our own well-being and other people's. . . . [You are] a being whose wants make no sense, don't harmonize: whose desires deep down are discordantly arranged, so that you truly want to possess and you truly want not to at the very same time. You're equipped, you realize, more for farce (or even tragedy) than happy endings. . . . You're human, and that's where we live; that's our normal experience.180 Until we fully acknowledge the chaos within us that the Bible calls sin, we live in what Calvin calls "unreality. — Timothy J. Keller

For example, when asked to write twenty statements beginning with the words "I am ... ," Americans are likely to list their own internal psychological characteristics (happy, outgoing, interested in jazz), whereas East Asians are more likely to list their roles and relationships (a son, a husband, an employee of Fujitsu). — Jonathan Haidt

You can have a pet zebra and put that zebra into a small cage every day and tell the zebra that you love it, but no matter how you and the zebra love each other, the fact remains, that the zebra should be let out of that cage and should belong to someone who can treat it better, the way it should be treated, someone who can make it happy. — C. JoyBell C.

Sanity is not about confrontation. It's about filtering. Having a stable and happy life is about saying "no" to crazy people, not about inviting them in and then hoping that confrontations are going to make them sane. — Stefan Molyneux

But the reality is that women today do not think of themselves in the context of helping "their man." Women today have been brainwashed into thinking that efforts in that direction are in the category of oppression, subservience, and catering to frail male egos. It is sad that this is the prevalent point of view, because interdependence is what ultimately feeds both the man and the woman what they truly need to be happy. — Laura C. Schlessinger

Contrary to what most women think, men want a lot more than just sex. A man wants to make a difference in a woman's life and make her happy. — Linda Alfiori

I just want you to know that where ever life takes you, I'll always be happy for you as long as its something that makes you happy because that's all that really makes me happy. Why? I'm just listening to my heart and all it's telling me is to understand. Which in a way I can but then again I can't. I'm use to it all though because not everyone lives a fair life if you know what I mean. — Jonathan Anthony Burkett

It was a great love," she said. "Don't let anyone tell you differently. Take good care of yourself. You'll be happy with someone else. — Erick Setiawan

Happy relationships are boring. We all want them in our own life. But I don't want to watch them on TV. — Alan Ball

I've built employee perks programs before and it's impossible to manually build a program that makes everyone happy. I'd make a deal with one gym then hear about another gym an employee would prefer. As a small business owner, I didn't have the time or leverage to negotiate and manage dozens of vendor relationships. — Paige Craig

Listen she said, everything ends, every single relationship you will ever have in your lifetime is going to end ... I'll die, you'll die, you'll get tired of each other. You don't always know how it's going to happen, but it is always going to happen. So stop trying to make everything permanent, it doesn't work. I want you to go out there and find some nice man you have no intention of spending the rest of your life with. You can be very, very happy with people you aren't going to marry. — Ann Patchett

Everything in a movie completed. Relationships began, they developed and they ended or went on happily forever. All in less than two hours. Life, though, was not like a movie, it was ragged, an outdated map with new streets added whose direction you could never quite discern, or a maze filled with suddenly appearing walls and aimless corridors. Even when a movie didn't have a happy ending, it had a logical ending that you could live with. Life had endings that you didn't know were endings, or endings that thought were endings and then they weren't. — Marshall Thornton

It is a hard message to swallow at first blush because it brings into question everything that we think we are, which for the most part seems to come from what we identify with, our bodies, our thoughts, our feelings, our relationships, our values, our work, our expectations of what is "supposed" to happen and how things are "supposed" to work out for me in order for me to be happy, our stories of where we came from and where we are going and of who we are. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

For people to be happy in life, two factors are crucial: One is good interpersonal relationships and the second is a feeling of productivity. That feeling feeds motivation. — Peter A. Spevak

To love everyone unconditionally does not mean to give everyone your unconditional time. Sometimes, to love completely, we must never see someone again. This, too, is love. This is giving someone the freedom to exist and be happy, even if it must be without you. — Vironika Tugaleva

Humanity is under great pressure to evolve because it is our only chance of survival as a race. This will affect every aspect of your life and close relationships in particular. Never before have relationships been as problematic and conflict ridden as they are now. As you may have noticed, they are not here to make you happy or fulfilled. If you continue to pursue the goal of salvation through a relationship, you will be disillusioned again and again. But if you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer you salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born into this world. For those who hold on to the old patterns, there will be increasing pain, violence, confusion, and madness. — Eckhart Tolle

Most people do not read books on relationships if they feel their relationships are healthy, happy, or easy. — Van Moody

We all say we hate being misunderstood and how we desperately want to find people who understand us. But it is not lack of compatible people that keeps us lonely. There is no shortage of people on your journey. The real, secret obstacle that we have against finding authentic, genuine relationships with people is our subconscious fear of growth. If we stick around in the bin of broken toys playing the queen or the king, at least we get to feel some sense of accomplishment at being the most evolved person we know. To find our tribe means finding people we can learn from, people who are better at some things than we are, people who have something to teach. We say we want it, but how many of us fear being a beginner more than loneliness and much more than being in the wrong crowd? There is a strange comfort, a sense of safety, to suffering and loneliness. To be happy, to find our family, we must be willing to let that go. — Vironika Tugaleva

Well, I don't think just because people are in a relationship that they're happy. I don't think relationships necessarily make people happy. You just are happy or you're not happy. — Lisa Edelstein

If you have time to whine then you have time to find solution. — Dee Dee Artner

Do not give up on love. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Life offers a cruel choice: you can be right or happy. Not both. This is true regardless of whom you may be involved with, but it is especially true if there is an emotional vampire in your life. — Albert J. Bernstein

The best way to keep relationships happy, healthy, and supportive can be summed up in one word: appreciation. What you appreciate, appreciates. When we demonstrate our appreciation for the support we receive from others, it reinforces that behavior and deepens our connection to them. — Marci Shimoff

All the really successful, happy relationships that I know of, the people that are together are friends, anyways. — Ashton Kutcher

The reason most relationships fail isn't because we haven't found the right person. It's because we haven't found ourselves and we're hoping someone can fill that void for us. They can't. No one can. Self-love is and always will be a prerequisite to every happy romance. — Vironika Tugaleva

In good relationships, we are happy to grow as the other person becomes part of us and who we are. — Miroslav Volf

As regards structure, comedy has come a long way since Shakespeare, who in his festive conclusions could pair off any old shit and any old fudge-brained slag (see Claudio and Hero in Much Ado) and get away with it. But the final kiss no longer symbolizes anything and well-oiled nuptials have ceased to be a plausible image of desire. That kiss is now the beginning of the comic action, not the end that promises another beginning from which the audience is prepared to exclude itself. All right? We have got into the habit of going further and further beyond the happy-ever-more promise: relationships in decay, aftermaths, but with everyone being told a thing or two about themselves, busy learning from their mistakes. So, in the following phase, with the obstructive elements out of the way (DeForest, Gloria) and the consummation in sight, the comic action would have been due to end, happily. But who is going to believe that any more? — Martin Amis

Building relationships is the key for being happy as a coach. Players must want to play for you. If they are comfortable with you, they will work hard for you. — Mike McConathy

If we harm someone else, we're inevitably also hurting ourselves. Some quality of sensitivity and awareness has to shut down for us to be able to objectify someone else, to deny them as a living, feeling being - someone who wants to be happy, just as we do. — Sharon Salzberg

If you can't be happy and content by yourself then you shouldn't be in a relationship. — Evan Sutter

When you're a guest star, you kinda feel like you have to prove something. Everyone else is on the show and has started establishing relationships. And you're just hoping that they're happy you were cast. — Andrea Gabriel

It's hard to say which I like more, the perfectly happy days or the hours right after we've ended a good fight. — Crystal Woods

Everybody enjoys what feels good. Everyone wants to live a carefree, happy, and easy life, to fall in love and have amazing sex and relationships, to look perfect and make money and be popular and well-respected and admired and a total baller to the point that people part like the Red Sea when they walk into the room. Everybody wants that. It's easy to want that. A more interesting question, a question that most people never consider, is, "What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?" Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out. For — Mark Manson

For five years I didn't think it was possible to be this happy.
But then he forgot all those promises he made. He forgot why he loved me. He simply stopped loving me.

And this is how he did it:
He stopped talking to me unless I spoke to him.
He stopped holding my hand.
He stopped kissing me good night.
He stopped kissing me good morning.
He stopped kissing me.
He stopped smiling at me.
He stopped laughing.
He stopped bathing and showering with me.
He stopped wanting me.
He started swearing at me.
He started lying to me.
He started cheating on me.
He hurt me.
And then he told me he was in love with another woman and wanted a divorce.
Oh, I forgot. He said he was sorry.

I wanted to blow his fucking brains out. — Terry McMillan

Happy relationships depend not on finding the right person, but on being the right person. — Eric Butterworth

I have great relationships with all my exes, and everyone in my life, because I honor the time and the love and the energy of those relationships. I'm happy to say that I can have everybody over for dinner. — Kevin Drew

Happy relationships don't just happen. You make them happen. — Bo Sanchez

The implications of the Triunity of God for prayer are many. It means, to begin with, that God has always had within himself a perfect friendship. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are adoring one another, giving glorifying love to one another, and delighting in one another. We know of no joy higher than being loved and loving in return, but a triune God would know that love and joy in unimaginable, infinite dimensions. God is, therefore, infinitely, profoundly happy, filled with perfect joy - not some abstract tranquility but the fierce happiness of dynamic loving relationships. Knowing this God is not to get beyond emotions or thoughts but to be filled with glorious love and joy. — Timothy Keller

I looked at my little family all smiling and quite happy at the thought that Charlie had tried to maim or kill Mr. Lomax - or at least blow up his van - and I realized then that I was the only normal one. — Nina Stibbe

Let us say your wife, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend makes you happy. If they leave, you're bound to be unhappy. You are the slave of the thing that makes you happy. You are a junkie and human relationships can be expensive habits. — Frederick Lenz

If we have not developed a reservoir of spiritual wealth, no amount of money is likely to make us happy. Spiritual wealth provides faith. It gives us love. It brings and expands wisdom. Spiritual wealth leads to happiness because it guides us into useful or loving relationships. — John Templeton

Watching the way he treats you made me realize that maybe I had set my sights too low. After chasing someone who didn't give me the time of day ... I just see how Vincent anticipates your every desire and tries to make it come true for you. How, when he sees you walk into a room, it's like he's transformed into this person who is bigger and better than the one he was just minutes before. I want to be that for someone. I think I deserve it. And I'm not going to pine away for a guy who feels that for someone else. So until my own chivalrous knight shows up, I've decided to live a full life and be happy with my lot. — Amy Plum

Perhaps it's because it's incredible to meet someone and say: with this person, I'm happy. — Anna Gavalda

Nature designed with a random set of genes and circumstances in which we were born. To be happy, we have to accept it and make the most of nature's design. Are you? Goals will help you do that. I must add, don't just have career or academic goals. Set goals to give you a balanced, successful life. I use the word balanced before successful. Balanced means ensuring your health, relationships, mental peace are all in good order. — Chetan Bhagat

We are still on our journey, still suffering and still laughing together. But I feel like the tide has turned, and I think we will have our happy ending yet. Even if it doesn't look like what we were expecting. — Meg Keene

Psychopaths can assume the burden of mental accounting without any obvious distress. That is no accident: They are psychopaths. They do not care about others and are quite happy to sever relationships whenever the need arises. Some people are monsters of egocentricity. But lying unquestionably comes at a psychological cost for the rest of us. — Sam Harris

There are only two ways to experience joy and peace of mind in relationships; we either get what we want or we learn to be happy with what we have. — Kevin Darne

If you stay in the company of anger, pain, or hurt, happiness will find someone else to visit. Make the choice to view all of your past relationships as a gift. Throw out what hasn't worked in the past and incorporate new concepts. Focus on being happy. — Kristen Crockett

This next song is about when you get your heart broken and you try your best to glue it back together and you wake up one morning and you're so happy because you realize, Oh my God, the tape's holding! — Sara Quin

If I am constantly working, my relationships fail. So at least now I can have enough time to write a happy record. And be in love and be happy. And then I don't know what I'll do. Get married. Have some kids. Plant a nice vegetable patch. — Adele

If you love someone, if you think you could make them happy for the rest of your life together, then nothing should stop you. You should be prepared to take them as they are and deal with the consequences. Relationships aren't neat and clean - they're ugly and messy, and they make almost no sense except to the two people in them. If you truly love someone, you accept the circumstances, you don't hide behind them — Taylor Jenkins Reid

And you, Mom. I loved you. You've asked if i felt and understood that you loved me. of course I did. And you know this. I loved your love because it kept me safe and happy and wanted, and it existed beyond words and hugs and eyes. — Lisa Genova

You deserve to be rich. You deserve to live a happy life. You deserve peace of mind. You deserve respect. You deserve loving relationships. And YES, it's all possible. — Maddy Malhotra

People like to say love is unconditional, but it's not, and even if it was unconditional, it's still never free. There's always an expectation attached. They always want something in return. Like they want you to be happy or whatever and that makes you automatically responsible for their happiness because they won't be happy unless you are ... I just don't want that responsibility. — Katja Millay

But often it is a seemingly irresolvable relationship that teaches us the most, once we're willing to be vulnerable and honest, once we're willing to connect with what Chogyam Trungpa called "the genuine heart of sadness." As warriors in training we do our best to hold the person in our heart without any hypocrisy. One thing we can do with a difficult relationship is to place a picture of the person somewhere we will see it often and think, "I wish for your deepest well-being". Or we can write down the person's name, along with the aspiration that they may be safe, may be happy, may live in peace.
Regardless of what specific action we take, our aspiration is to benefit the other person and wish them well. — Pema Chodron

Rose leaned against the bathroom door. Here it was - her real life, the truth of who she was, barreling down on her like a bus with bad brakes. Here was the truth - she wasn't the kind of person Jim could fall in love with. She wasn't what she'd made herself out to be - a cheerful, uncomplicated girl, a normal girl with a happy, orderly life, a girl who wore pretty shoes and had nothing more pressing on her mind that whether ER was a rerun this week. The truth was in the exercise tape she didn't have time to unwrap, let alone exercise to; the truth was her hairy legs and ugly underwear. Most of all, the truth was her sister, her gorgeous, messed-up, fantastically unhappy and astoundingly irresponsible sister. — Jennifer Weiner

Appreciation is one of those funny things that you have to just allow it to blend together on its own. Past reveals all as they say. You will indefinitely know when the time comes to leave a crappy relationship. There's just no mistaking it. There comes a time when no more growth can come to a union for many folks. Well then go plant your seeds into your own garden before you come invest your time into another person again. Whatever you need to connect with will come and go as necessary. — Sereda Aleta Dailey

I grew up with a front-row seat to what a happy, healthy marriage looks like. Never perfect, constantly evolving, always united. — Shonda Rhimes

Most people think of love as some sort of power outside of themselves that will "take them away from all of this." Sadly, this is not the case. Love exists only within our own hearts, and to have happy relationships we must first become truly loving people. And as we fill our hearts with love by expressing love for others in thought, word, and deed ("acting as if" until we make it happen if necessary), that love can heal our own lives, help to solve our problems, and enable us to feel good about ourselves. — John Templeton

It's healthy to periodically self examine your life, your goals, your relationships, and ask yourself honestly, am I happy? Am I on the right track? — Benjamin Stone

I've been in relationships where I've felt terribly alone. Just because you're with someone, it doesn't mean you're happy. — George Clooney

Relationships don't come with a warranty and being in love is no guarantee of a happy ending. — Jonathan Tropper

I deserve to be happy and I think a lot of people stay in relationships for wrong reasons and instead of just looking at each other and just saying, 'you know, it's like sands of the hourglass, we learned our lessons, we can end in war or we can end in peace.' — Jenny McCarthy

My songs have always been frustrating themes, relationships that I've had. And now that I'm in love, I expect it to be really happy, or at least there won't be half as much anger as there was. — Kurt Cobain

A universal truth that most mature women have learned, often the hard way ... When choosing a mate, keep in mind, only nature has the ability to turn sand into pearls. If the relationship isn't happy, healthy, or working, move on ... unless of course you prefer sand. — K.E. Garvey

Not every happy person is married, and, Not every married person is happy. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Her face looked ugly in the attempt to avoid tears; it was an ugliness which bound him to her more than any beauty could have done. It isn't being happy together, he thought as though it were a fresh discovery, that makes one love
it's being unhappy together. — Graham Greene

The key differentiator, then, between happy high achievers and the rest is that happy high achievers are extremely vigilant about only allowing relationships into their lives that add to their energy. This includes their marriages as well as their relationships with their families, companies, boards of directors, key staff, and important clients. They make it a point to only allow relationships that are net additive. If a relationship isn't net additive, it's no longer one of their primary relationships. It gets shifted or it is gone. — Lex Sisney

Because of that she had never had enough energy to be herself, a person who, like everyone else in the world, needed other people in order to be happy. But other people were so difficult. They reacted in unpredictable ways, they surrounded themselves with defensive walls, they behaved just as she did, pretending they didn't care about anything. When someone more open to life appeared, they either rejected them outright or made them suffer, consigning them to being inferior, ingenuous. — Paulo Coelho