Quote by Hanya Yanagihara: “Happiness, he thought, was the ability to forget.”

This quote offers a melancholic perspective on happiness, suggesting it's not about constant joy, but rather the capacity to release or suppress painful memories and experiences to find peace. It implies an escape from suffering is key to contentment.

Within a narrative deeply concerned with trauma and its lasting effects, this thought reflects a character's struggle to cope with an unbearable past, where forgetting becomes a desperate desire.

American novelist and editor-in-chief of T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Her 2015 novel A Little Life became one of the most emotionally intense and widely debated literary works of its decade, exploring friendship, trauma, and survival.