We've got people looking at our seamy side and our sad side a lot of the time because that's easier. It's much more difficult to make a film about happiness with lots of jokes in it.

Finding love is a fixation now, and that's because although romantic love can sometimes cause a lot of suffering, it can also give people peaks of happiness that come very close to our ideal of 'the happy state.'

My books are love stories at core, really. But I am interested in manifestations of love beyond the traditional romantic notion. In fact, I seem not particularly inclined to write romantic love as a narrative motive or as an easy source of happiness for my characters.

Now I believe that lovers should be draped in flowers and laid entwined together on a bed of clover and left there to sleep, left there to dream of their happiness.

When a mother quarrels with a daughter, she has a double dose of unhappiness hers from the conflict, and empathy with her daughter's from the conflict with her. Throughout her life a mother retains this special need to maintain a good relationship with her daughter.

I think that the United States and the Philippines have always had a good relationship with each other. We were colonized by the Americans and we have their culture and our traditions even up to this day and I think that we're very welcoming with the Americans. And I don't see any problem with that at all.

Power, after love, is the first source of happiness.

Happiness is just a positive perception from our brain. Some days, you will be unhappy. Our brain is a tool we use. It's not who we are.

Like most people, I have several pet subjects - that may or may not be interesting to other people. Don't get me started on happiness, or habits, or children's literature, or Winston Churchill, unless you really want to talk about it.

A certain amount of impatience may be useful to stimulate and motivate us to action. However, I believe that a lack of patience is a major cause of the difficulties and unhappiness in the world today.

Happiness is not always through success. Equally, the constant pursuit of success is sure unhappiness. But we have to find the balance. My own thoughts are that parenting is very personal. And we all feel enormous insecurity about parenting. What are they going to think of us 20 years down the line?

The happiness of the bee and the dolphin is to exist. For man it is to know that and to wonder at it.

True happiness involves the full use of one's power and talents.

That should be the measure of success for everyone. It's not money, it's not fame, it's not celebrity; my index of success is happiness.

My mom is the most positive person. She has always had a smile on her face no matter what came her way. After seeing that, I'm not going to let a little cellulite get in the way of my happiness!

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

There are many ways to make the most of your time on the planet, and propagation of the species is just one of them. If you're convinced that it's the key to your happiness, there are routes open to you, whether with the help of modern medical science, marrying into a readymade one, or through fostering and adoption.

Completeness? Happiness? These words don't come close to describing my emotions. There truly is nothing I can say to capture what motherhood means to me, particularly given my medical history.

To seduce a woman famous for strict morals, religious fervor and the happiness of her marriage: what could possibly be more prestigious?

Only after I faced the unhappiness of my first marriage did I start on the path of personal growth.

Seeing unhappiness in the marriage of friends, I was content to have chosen music and laughter as a substitute for a husband.

Once I hit 25, people started asking me about marriage and kids all the time. I remember hitting 35 and some would ask the same questions with a strange tone, as if my life was somehow over because I hadn't yet settled into their version of happiness.

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.

You know it's love when all you want is that person to be happy, even if you're not part of their happiness.