This book is about the melancholic direction, which I call the bittersweet: a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world. The bittersweet is also about the recognition that light and dark, birth and deathbitter and sweetare forever paired. Days of honey, days of onion, as an Arabic proverb puts it.

Bittersweet by Susan Cain