Faking Happiness Quotes

“This was a new skill she'd acquired, the ability to look, to the outside world, utterly serene and even cheerful, while, in her skull, all was chaos.”
― Dave Eggers, The Circle

“In time the whole family perked up like Sesame Street puppets, hoping that cheer, if worked at hard enough, could sugar the living and quiet the dead.”
― Toni Morrison, God Help the Child

“Maybe you've thought that as a Christian you have to smile and pretend to be okay when someone asks you how you are doing. Perhaps you think that if you're grieving, then you're dishonoring God. This isn't so.”
― Dave Furman, Being There: How to Love Those Who Are Hurting

“All these years, her sole objective had been to keep still and hope no one would ever know. She had been a mistress of stillness. She had mastered the simulation of peace without a wisp of real peace, like a nun from a silent order who was screaming inside her head, or a yogi racked with pain. How she had managed to fool anyone, let alone everyone, mystified her (how obtuse people were!) and, oddly, made her extraordinarily bitter. Because the price of her gift for evasion was to have no one, not one person, who understood how horrible she felt. All the time. Absolutely all the time.”
― Jean Hanff Korelitz, Admission