“You’re training a new employee,' says Mrs. Clark, 'to take over your boring old job.' When you raise a child.”

“If there’s any trick to doing a job you hate . . . Mrs. Clark says it’s to find a job you hate even more.”

“Until a job is outsourced or streamlined through an innovation, an employee is trained to operate robotically. This is what a brand is.”

“You’re not going to throw this away, are you?” she says, and she’ll be talking about the grains of rice in the bottom of the salt shaker. “No, Mrs. Peacock, by all means, you take them. They’ll come in handy when your son gets out of prison and marries your niece.”

“When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.”

“Training moments occur when both parents and children do their jobs. The parent's job is to make the rule. The child's job is to break the rule. The parent then corrects and disciplines. The child breaks the rule again, and the parent manages the consequences and empathy that then turn the rule into reality and internal structure for the child.”