Jhumpa Lahiri ♥ the ocean

Thanks to its very lack of welcome, its unwavering indifference, the ocean always made me feel accepted, and to my dying day, the seaside is the only place where I can feel truly and recklessly happy.

Jhumpa Lahiri, "Rhode Island," in Matt Weiland & Sean Wilsey eds., State by State: A Panaramic Portrait of America (2008)

Shorter days—winter's coming!

In late June, when summer hasn't even kicked in and already the days are getting shorter, I am seized by a kind of epic desperation. On these days I am reminded of doing drugs, and reach instead for my decanter of coffee brandy. I am reminded of when, after doing drugs on a semi-regular basis, your terror of the come-down creeps closer and closer to the apex of your druggy glory, until the moment when you're nearing your happiest is also the moment most tinged with terror and apprehension because you're about to begin the long descent.

Heidi Julavits, "Maine," in Matt Weiland & Sean Wilsey eds., State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America (New York: HarperCollins, 2008)

Elite but unhappy

It comes to this: the elite have purchased self-perpetuation at the price of their children's happiness. The more hoops kids have to jump through, the more it costs to get them through them and the fewer families can do it. But the more they have to jump through, the more miserable they are.

William Deresiewicz, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life (New York: Free Press, 2014), p. 241

Work and happiness

            "If your work won’t make you or anyone else happier, why do more of it than you have to? Believers in the gospel of work typically consider happiness irrelevant. Deep down, they think we have a duty to be miserable."

Christopher Clausen, “Against Work,” Am. Scholar, v. 73, n. 4, Autumn 2004, at 133, 137.