The Trouble with Happiness Quotes

“The most important thing, thought Edith, is what happens to a person when they see mountains. The most important thing is probably always precisely the thing you can't have. That's where all the happiness is”
― Tove Ditlevsen, The Trouble with Happiness: And Other Stories

“Why doesn’t it dawn on a person that their parents had their own lives separate from their children, until it’s too late to ask them how it was?”
― Tove Ditlevsen, The Trouble with Happiness: And Other Stories

“You can’t control your circumstances. You can’t control your fate. All you can do is avoid people whose words stir things up, secret things, that absolutely must not be stirred up.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, The Trouble with Happiness: And Other Stories

“Her entire character consisted of a pile of memories without a pattern or a plan.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, The Trouble with Happiness: And Other Stories

“She was a person who didn’t come when she was called. She was the one who called when she needed something, in a thin voice, which was easily drowned out by the storm.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, The Trouble with Happiness: And Other Stories

“Children are so willing to be tricked to avoid the truth they don’t want to hear.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, The Trouble with Happiness: And Other Stories

“The sun was out. Right outside. It seemed as if its rays reached the windows with the best of intentions, but then had to give up, slide down the wall in vain, and return to space.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, The Trouble with Happiness: And Other Stories

“steering her inner world. Few people, even once in their lives, dare to make the inexpressible real.”
― Tove Ditlevsen, The Trouble with Happiness: And Other Stories

“What does one person mean to another anyway, except when one forces the other to act?”
― Tove Ditlevsen, The Trouble with Happiness: And Other Stories