When you drink coffee, you become very focused, and in fact, the key to creative genius is to be defocused.

Part of positive psychology is about being positive, but sometimes laughter and clowns are not appropriate. Some people don't want to be happy, and that's okay. They want meaningful lives, and those are not always the same as happy lives.

Every country has its cocktail-party question. A simple one-sentence query, the answer to which unlocks a motherlode of information about the person you just met.... In Switzerland it is, Where are you from? That is all you need to know about someone.

Compromise is a skill, and like all skills it atrophies from lack of use.

When you're stuck on something creatively, you can't solve a problem, you go to a coffee shop.

Believing in everything looks a lot like believing in nothing.

Our happiness is completely and utterly intertwined with other people: family and friends and neighbors and the woman you hardly notice who cleans your office. Happiness is not a noun or verb. It's a conjunction. Connective tissue.