You make the mistake of thinking you have to choose, that you have to do what you want, that there are conditions for happiness. What matters—all that matters, really—is the will to happiness, a kind of enormous, ever-present consciousness. […] What matters to me is a certain quality of happiness. I can only find it in a certain struggle with its opposite—a stubborn and violent struggle. Am I happy? […] If I’m happy, it’s because of my bad conscience. I had to get away and reach this solitude where I could face—in myself, I mean—what had to be faced, what was sun and what was tears … Yes, I’m happy, in human terms.