Memory is the happiness of being alone.

Taken at face value, the line suggests that memory can function as a private refuge: when one is physically or socially alone, recollection supplies companionship, warmth, and continuity. It implies that solitude need not be emptiness; the mind can reinhabit past experiences, relationships, and sensations, turning isolation into a kind of self-sufficiency. The phrasing also hints at an ambivalence—memory is “happiness,” but it is happiness that depends on absence, on what is no longer present. In that sense, the quote points to memory’s double role: it consoles by preserving what time removes, yet it also underscores the distance between past and present.