Jennifer (formerly Eccentric Muse)

“There was something out of kilter with his mother's happiness, as though a light had been switched on by a passing stranger, and left to illuminate an empty room.”
― Anne Enright, The Green Road

“Basil Ransom had got up just as Mrs. Luna made this last declaration; for a young lady had glided into the room, who stopped short as it fell upon her ears. She stood there looking, consciously and rather seriously, at Mr. Ransom; a smile of exceeding faintness played about her lips--it was just perceptible enough to light up the native gravity of her face. It might have been likened to a thin ray of moonlight resting upon the wall of a prison.”
― Henry James, The Bostonians

“Americans he found to be so outwardly happy all the time and superficially positive. To be indiscriminately happy seemed to him as much of a curse as to be indiscriminately sad.”
― Weike Wang, Joan Is Okay

“Maybe it was not fear of death that motivated the people who were most alive, she thought, but some other force, say a capacity for delight.”
― Lydia Millet, Oh Pure And Radiant Heart