I spend a lot of time saying to myself, "Well, is that really what I like to do? Is that really something that makes me happy?" and letting go of the things that don't make me happy.

Now that I've relinquished my fantasies of all the people I wish I could be, and stopped feeling guilty about not going to the opera or pretending that I want to attend a foreign policy lecture, I have more time for the things that I truly enjoy.

When I thought about why I was sometimes reluctant to push myself, I realized that it was because I was afraid of failure - but in order to have more success, I needed to be willing to accept more failure.

A book is a better way to develop a complicated idea, or to tell a big story and to show how ideas weave in and out of each other, which is something that comes up a lot in happiness because all these ideas are interconnected.

Some kind of clutter is difficult - letting go of things with sentimental value, sifting through papers - but some clutter I find very refreshing to clear. I drive my daughters nuts because I'm always wandering into their rooms to clear clutter.

If I pretend to myself that I'm different from the way I truly am, I'm going to make choices that won't make me happy.

Happy people make people happy, but I can’t make someone be happy, and no one else can make me happy.