How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Was Saul unhappy, in need of the machine? No, happy, but wanting to hold onto happiness always. Could you blame a boy wise enough to know his position who tried to keep it that way? (13.53)
Which leads us to ask: If you've always been happy, can you even comprehend what "unhappy" is? (Yeah, we're getting deep here. We know you can handle it.)
Quote #5
"You want to see the real Happiness Machine? The one they patented a couple thousand years ago, it still runs, not good, all the time, no! but it runs. It's been here all along." (13.129)
One way to understand this is that happiness can be built—but instead of with machine parts, it needs to be built with human connections.
Quote #6
And he watched with now-gentle sorrow and now-quick delight, and at last quiet acceptance as all the bits and pieces of this house mixed, stirred, settled, poised, and ran steadily again. "The Happiness Machine," he said. "The Happiness Machine." (13.137)
In a way, Leo Auffmann's family is a more complicated and delicate mechanism than any watch he could repair or machine he could build. Does familial happiness require that each member serve a specific function, like the parts of a smoothly running machine?