“my mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
week, telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile!
why don't you ever smile?"

and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw”

““Don’t tell me. It changed your life.” I was smiling.
She smiled back. “It didn’t even change my mind.””

“She spilled rice on my knee, and she smiled. I wanted her to spill a thousand things on me, lava, acid, bricks, anything, and smile each time”

“If my eyes could show my soul, everyone would cry when they saw me smile.”

“You don't feel like smiling? Then what? Force yourself to smile. Act as if you were already happy, and that will tend to make you happy.”

“There was a species of middle pretty who smiled at everything: happy smile, disappointed smile, you're-in-trouble smile.”

“There was something I wanted, something I envisioned, loving parents, a happy home with everyone smiling at me. A home that no one would ever want to leave, a warm place, a warm person. It exists, I know it does”

“But by that time you do not much care whether she smiles or frowns. Why could she not have smiled when her smiles would have filled you with ecstasy? Everything comes too late in this world.”

“Then he smiles as if he'd be happy to lie there and gaze at me forever.”

“He saw the girl watching him and he smiled at her. It was an old smile that he had been using for fifty years, ever since he first smiled…”