“Everybody achieves success in life—a blessed few early in their careers, the rest of us when we lower our standards”

“Success comes to us when we have a burning desire to achieve and we focus our full power on achieving that.”

“The living are always trying to find the shortcuts to happiness in life. But look what happens when someone achieves premature success: they bloom too early and spend the rest of their lives dying....Success without struggle warps a person.”

“We’re freaks, that’s all. Those two bastards got us nice and early and made us into freaks with freakish standards, that’s all. We’re the tattooed lady, and we’re never going to have a minute’s peace, the rest of our lives, until everybody else is tattooed, too.”

“Our early success, blessing that it was, made us complacent and we weren't sufficiently afraid of what came next. Sometimes having a little fear early saves one from experiencing a big fear later on. [Al Gleeson in THE HALCYON DISLOCATION]”

“Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be. If we do our best, we are a success.”