Happiness Quotes

“The reckless open their arms and topple into love, as do dreamers, who fly in their dreams without fear or danger. Those who know that all love must end in loss do not fall but rather cross slowly from the not knowing into the knowing.”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness

“Love is a gamble, the stake is the human heart. The lover holds his or her cards close, lays them out one at a time and watches each move of the other player. To whom do you go first? This is the ‘tell’ of love. When a thing happens, be it good or bad, when you pick up the telephone or push through a crowd, who is it you most want to reach?”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness

“He seemed to remember a sense of fearlessness as a child, for lacking the knowledge of death, he supposed, for still believing bad things happened only to other people. How long you held on to that particular belief depended on where you were born.”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness

“She liked him, had liked him, but now all she felt was the faint but real distaste a woman feels for the lover she no longer desires.”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness

“What if, by labelling our patients damaged from the outset, we not only condemn them to a self-fulfilling prophecy, but have overlooked a potential finding of equal importance? That the emotional vulnerability of trauma is oftentimes transformed into emotional strength. What if we were to have revealed to us that misfortune can lend life quality? Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger, yes. What if I told you that there are times when whatever does not kill me can make me more, not less, than the person I was before?”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness

“Homesickness was an adjustment disorder, that was the long and short of it.”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness

“The reckless open their arms & topple into love, as do dreamers who fly in their dreams without fear or danger. Those who know that all love must end in loss do not fall but rather cross slowly from the not knowing into the knowing.”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness

“There is nothing inevitable about the impact of trauma, except perhaps the way the victim is going to be treated by professionals like us, who will then ascribe every subsequent difficulty in their lives to what has happened to them in the past. We don’t blame victims any longer, instead we condemn them. We treat them like damaged goods and in so doing we compound the pain of whatever wound has been inflicted and we encourage everyone around them to do the same.”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness

“But most people believe it because they read it in the papers and whatnot. The trick of politicians is to know what those three words are and appear to be addressing the concerns they raise, if only by making sure they repeat them often enough. The public likes to be indulged, and there are those happy to do so in the interest of their careers or ambitions,’ said Attila. ‘But you would not indulge the listeners of the radio show. You spoke plainly, it is your job as a scientist to deal with facts and it is also your nature. You treated the listeners like adults. It’s hard not to feel frustrated when they don’t respond in kind. The problem isn’t with you. That’s the good news. The bad news is you’ll never get elected.’ Attila smiled.”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness

“you ask a member of the voting public a question on any subject most of us can only come up with three words we identify with that thing. The words depend on what our concerns are or what the papers tell us our concerns are,”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness

“He selected some music and thought that he would dance, but he failed. Instead he turned up the music until it smothered the sound of the dead woman weeping in his heart.”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness

“I’m a scientist, I should never have used the word coincidence. There’s less synchronicity and more causality than we often think. Things happen. Sometimes in ways we couldn’t even start to imagine.”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness

“There was, she thought, a moment between men and women in which a woman can no longer meet a certain man’s gaze. men held the power of the gaze, the freedom to look upon women as they pleased. In public a woman looked freely only upon men with whom there was no possibility of sex or the mistaken presumption of desire, in other words the very (very) old and the very young. In company women looked at men who might be colleagues or neighbours or married to women they knew, but even then their gaze was guarded. The moment friendship transformed into something else the woman looked away.”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness

“Minutes past midnight the group left Pardis to be mugged by the wind, which came at them down the street like a gang of thieves.”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness

“Jean wondered how it might be to go out into the night and howl for sex. The clarity of purpose was appealing. No games.”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness

“You know, a lot of people nowadays believe they’re owed a happy ending.”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness

“Attila gave a small wry smile. ‘I’m not being cynical, just realistic. War is in the blood of humans. The kind of people who torture and rape during war, they’re always among us, every time you walk down a busy street you’re passing killers waiting to kill. War gives them licence. We tell ourselves people are ordinarily good, but where’s the proof of that? There are no ordinarily good people, just a lot of people who’ve never been offered the opportunity to be anything else. As for the rest, the followers and foot soldiers – well, you can’t imprison half a nation. For them and for everyone else life carries on, only not quite as before.”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness

“And what is life without incident? Is such a life even possible?’ He took a sip of his water: ‘How do we become human except in the face of adversity?”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness

“On the other side of the river the lights of the South Bank theatre and concert halls were up. The actors would be preparing to perform emotions for those who had never felt those kinds of emotions in their lives and perhaps never would. Suffering had become a spectacle that served not to warn of the vagaries of misfortune but to remind the audience, sitting in warmth and comfort, of their own good fortune.”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness

“The glass dwellers were terrified of the cloche being lifted. They treated the suffering of others as something exceptional, something that required treatment, when what was exceptional was all this.”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness

“My name is Attila.’ ah-til-ha.
‘That’s an unusual name,’ Jean said.
‘to whom?’ replied Attila cheerfully.
‘Well . . . everyone,’ said Jean.
‘not to the Hungarians or the Turks,’ said Attila.
‘your parents named you after Attila the Hun?’
Attila smiled. ‘Some people,’ he said, ‘name their baby girls Victoria.”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness

“The realisation,’ he said. He spoke no more loudly than before, but the words seemed to rise from his core. ‘That I have come to is this, that in our well-intentioned desire to describe and label the psychological wounds of the survivors of war and conflict and terror, we have failed to examine the psychological wounds of those who face the void without ever knowing the reality of life, of the creeping numbness that the fear of suffering, the terror of pain has created. We, professionals and lay folk alike, have used the suffering of others to reinforce the myth of ourselves: their unhappiness becomes the bolster to our happiness. We are terrified of their pain, simultaneously attracted to it and repelled by it. We want to be assured that all pain is treatable, while we comfort ourselves with the belief in the superior quality of our existence for never having encountered trauma, for this to continue we must build psychological fortresses to protect ourselves against the possibility of pain. Now you see that all of the weakness is not in them, those who live through the agony, who survive and transform into something else, but in others too. Here …’ He swept out an arm, to take in the room, the building, the city, and what lay beyond. The whole of it.”
― Aminatta Forna, Happiness