Growing up in Kansas City, I was always neat, the teacher's pet, know-it-all type.

I'm constantly on the hunt for insights about happiness or ideas about how to be happier - which probably makes me a somewhat tiresome companion at times.

Often, if there's something that I want to do, but somehow can't get myself to do, it's because I don't have clarity. This lack of clarity often arises from a feeling of ambivalence - I want to do something, but I don't want to do it; or I want one thing, but I also want something else that conflicts with it.

Whenever I'm trying to decide how to spend my precious time, energy, or money, I ask myself a series of questions. 'Will this broaden or deepen my relationships?' 'Will this contribute to an atmosphere of growth in my life?' 'Is this a way to 'Be Gretchen?' and 'Will this help connect me to my past?'

People like Nick Cave - that ridiculous, over-the-top doom, taking it to extremes - I find it uplifting because it's like someone else is feeling what you're feeling and putting it into their music. Someone expressing extreme joy is just as valuable; it's just the fact that they're expressing their soul through music.

If you have easy self-contentment, you might have a very, very cheap source of happiness.

I think one of the things that is essential for happiness in life, or at least for non-sadness, is producing something. I guess that's why I spend so much time and agony writing books. But working on carpentry is sort of like all the pleasure with none of the agony.

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.