Happiness front-loaded

Lake Champlain from the Burlington wharves, with New York's Adirondack Mountains in the background

“Where I live, in Vermont, there’s this thing that women know about men, which is this disease: their childhood was so idyllic that nothing in the rest of their life can ever be satisfying. It’s almost a plague.” 

– Colin Trevorrow (born 1976) film director who lived in Burlington, Vt., for nine years before moving to London.

“I’m going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season.” 

– Tracy Kidder (born 1945), author of literary nonfiction books. He was just kidding. He has long lived in the western Massachusetts town of Williamsburg.