Book Titles

…once we have an experience, we cannot simply set it aside and see the world as we would have seen it had the experience never happened.

Our experiences instantly become part of the lens through which we view our entire past, present, and future, and like any lens, they shape and distort what we see.

…people can be wrong in the present when they say they were wrong in the past.

…all claims of happiness are claims from someone’s point of view – from the perspective of a single human being whose unique collection of past experiences serves as a context, a lens, a background for her evaluation of her current experience.

Once we have an experience, we are unable to see the world as we did before. Our innocence is lost and we cannot go home again.

…happiness is a subjective experience that is difficult to describe to ourselves and to others, thus evaluating people’s claims about their own happiness is an exceptionally thorny business.

…strange as it is, there are times when people seem not to know their own hearts.

The bottom line is this: The attentive person’s honest, real-time report is an imperfect approximation of her subjective experience, but it is the only game in town.

…feelings don’t just matter – they are what mattering means.

…we can’t always get what we want, but at least we feel sure that we know what to want in the first place.