Casey Calpin

“The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active. That is why it is necessary to happiness that one should be tired.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Misalliance

“My friends tell me I am strong, decisive, and wise. What a joke. Where is my strength tonight? Where is my wisdom? Ironically, they tell me I am ‘so open’. Me, who has so many secrets that I have never shared. The irony would be funny if it wasn't so sad. Their blindness to my true self makes me feel invisible. Not in the way that a spirit or ghost is invisible, for I am most definitely flesh, blood, sinew, and bone. I even have a mind that works nimble and fast, and a mouth that speaks reasonably eloquently, when I feel I have something worthwhile to say. No, I’m invisible because the people who populate my life either do not, or cannot, see the real me. Of course, that is but another irony. I know much of my invisibility is of my own doing, and that is the last joke on myself: that which I seek is also that which I fear.”
― Lily Velden

“Grow up, Bailey."

"That is precisely what I'm doing," Bailey says. "I don't care if you don't understand that. Staying here won't make me happy. It will make you happy because you're insipid and boring, and an insipid, boring life is enough for you. It's not enough for me. It will never be enough for me. So I'm leaving. Do me a favor and marry someone who will take decent care of the sheep.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“That’s how stories happen — with a turning point, an unexpected twist. There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore