# Quote — Susan Cain, Bittersweet

> We think we long for eternal life, but maybe what we're really longing for is perfect and unconditional love; a world in which lions actually do lay down with lambs; a world free of famines and floods, concentration camps and Gulag archipelagos; a world in which we grow up to love others in the same helplessly exuberant way we once loved our parents; a world in which we're forever adored like a precious baby; a world built on an entirely different logic from our own, one in which life needn't eat life in order to survive.

- Author: [Susan Cain](https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-cain.md)
- Book: [Bittersweet](https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-cain/bittersweet.md)
- Page: 178
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Susan_Cain#Bittersweet) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-cain/bittersweet/we-think-we-long

## More from this book

> We’ve unwittingly taught (children) a delusion—that things are supposed to be whole; that real life is when things are going well; that disappointment, illness, and flies at the picnic are detours from the main road.

p. 184 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-cain/bittersweet/weve-unwittingly-taught.md)

> Our difficulty accepting impermanence is the heart of human suffering.

p. 181 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-cain/bittersweet/our-difficulty-accepting.md)

> The tragedy of life is linked inescapably with its splendor; you could tear civilization down and rebuild it from scratch, and the same dualities would rise again. Yet to fully inhabit these dualities—the dark as well as the light—is, paradoxically, the only way to transcend them.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/susan-cain/bittersweet/the-tragedy-of-life.md)