Happiness, a Mystery Quotes

“If you want to be happier than you are now, and solve your problem, nothing needs to change about your life situation. Only your thoughts need to change. Choose new thoughts: […] none of us have any problems that we don’t create with our own thoughts.”
― Sophie Hannah, Happiness, a Mystery: And 66 Attempts to Solve It

“Here is my recommendation: wherever possible, treat anything you can as a mystery. Why? Because mysteries make life better. I love mysteries, including the desperately-craving-an-answer part, more than I love their solutions. Definite answers shut down possibilities, while an unsolved puzzle ignites our imagination and invites us to think, ‘What if it turns out to be something shocking and unguessable that will well and truly blow my mind?’.”
― Sophie Hannah, Happiness, a Mystery: And 66 Attempts to Solve It

“Once while we were watching the denouement scene of a David Suchet Poirot episode, he [my husband] said irritably, ‘Why do they all just sit there and let Poirot accuse them of stuff? I’d get up and walk out.”
― Sophie Hannah, Happiness, a Mystery: And 66 Attempts to Solve It

“It’s usually rooted either in a belief that other people matter more than you do – that’s the people-pleasing part of it – or there could also be an element of perfectionism, the over-achiever’s Achilles heel: you can’t think well of yourself unless you’re over-achieving, so you take on too much, try to do it all perfectly and wear yourself out.”
― Sophie Hannah, Happiness, a Mystery: And 66 Attempts to Solve It

“That’s why I’m still worrying, at some level. I’m trying to think positively about a negative situation, when I should be trying to believe that there’s nothing negative about the situation.”
― Sophie Hannah, Happiness, a Mystery: And 66 Attempts to Solve It

“Perhaps the truth is that I don’t want to get my happiness-mystery solution from Aristotle, Schopenhauer or Katherine. I want to find it myself. I don’t want to be helped or saved by a Poirot equivalent. I want to be the Poirot in my own life.”
― Sophie Hannah, Happiness, a Mystery: And 66 Attempts to Solve It

“The pain you feel today is the strength you feel tomorrow.”
― Sophie Hannah, Happiness, a Mystery: And 66 Attempts to Solve It