A Short Guide to a Happy Life by Anna Quindlen
The Book in Three Sentences
A [personal] manifesto on how to live a happy life. Anna Quindlen draws on her own life experience and outpours how she has come to find happiness in her life. A source of inspiration when you're looking, or motivation to write your own life manifesto.
Notes on the Book
This is a very short book—50 pages in length and less than 3000 words long—with lots of stock photographs. It reads more like a personal manifesto, and looks more like a book of poems. I found myself feeling detached from Quindlen's very personal writing, yet I became highly motivated to write my own version of the book.
Favourite Quotes
“It is so easy to take for granted the pale new growth on an evergreen, the sheen of the limestone on Fifth Avenue, the color of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and fall and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of live” (pp.26).
"Think of your life as a terminal illness, because, if you do, you will live it with joy and passion, as it ought to be lived” (pp.45).
"School never ends. The classroom is everywhere” (pp.45–6).
"He stared out at the ocean and said, 'look at the view'... and every day, in some little way, I try to do what he said. I try to look at the view” (pp.50).