Herman Wouk, the 100-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Caine Mutiny, recently spoke to The Wall Street Journal about his childhood. Wouk was especially grateful for one simple pleasure: waking up to the sunlight streaming through his bedroom window. He said:

By luck, my childhood bedroom faced the sun. I grew up on Aldus Street in the Bronx, where my family lived on the top floor of a five-story walk-up in an apartment way in the back. Each morning from my bed, I'd see a beam of sunlight with motes dancing through it pass through the window. I felt good right away. The morning sun is cheering, no matter what mood you're in … I do have the same excitement each morning when I see the sun. That sense of enjoying being alive is still very real. When you reach 100, you're glad you're alive. Very glad.