“As we age we begin to grasp at youthful bliss like a life raft in a sea of harsh reality.”

“These people were smiling because they were where they wanted to be. They understood that life is too short for what-ifs and complications. Life, they found, can be as simple as reading the wind.”

“Perhaps elements like tenacity and humility combine to form a heroic compound.”

“I asked my Greek chorus about this sort of hero: the Underappreciated Personification of Resolve.”

“If, as has been postulated before, heroism happens when courage meets circumstance, what if the circumstances are mundane?”

“It could be that the hope was in the adventure, the honor in the pursuit, the pride in the doing.”

“Psycholinguists argue about whether language reflects our perception of reality or helps create them. I am in the latter camp. Take the names we give the animals we eat. The Patagonian toothfish is a prehistoric-looking creature with teeth like needles and bulging yellowish eyes that lives in deep waters off the coast of South America. It did not catch on with sophisticated foodies until an enterprising Los Angeles importer renamed it the considerably more palatable "Chilean sea bass.”