“But it’s an odd place. The air of disappointment and unfulfilled lives hangs heavy. I will always remember how Mary’s eyes lit up when she spoke about her PhD, how she became animated and alive. The way she took off her sweater with almost reckless abandon. For a few moments, there was a flash of life in that lifeless kitchen.”

“Last night the evening crept in as I drove down Gillies Road on my way to meet Kim and I saw the silhouette of a bald hill cast against a grey sky with a few white streaks of cloud. It was beautiful. And it was not true. The scene was real but my feeling was forced. I wanted it to be beautiful. I wanted to feel something.”

“We crossed our first checkpoint before dawn. In the heart of the Holy Land, the checkpoint was a valve: as we pumped through at 120 kilometres per hour, I saw cars with green and white plates queueing in the other direction.”

“You’ve no doubt heard people say that happiness is a choice. And perhaps, like me, you shrugged your shoulders and mumbled ‘maybe for you, it is’. But what if we’ve misunderstood what they meant?”

“In The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson suggests that when we decide what to give a f*ck about in the brief time allotted to us on this earth, we shouldn’t focus on the (hedonic) pleasure we want. Instead we should ask ourselves, what pain am I willing to endure to get what I want?”

“Natural unhappiness requires a frame of happiness grounded in reality and acceptance. But when the opposite occurs, and we base our idea of happiness on delusion and denial, this can give rise to the third and final type of unhappiness, which I call unnatural unhappiness.”