“The hard days are the best because that's where champions are made so if you can push through, you can push through anything!”

“You see, when you're middle class, you have to live with the fact that history will ignore you. You have to live with the fact that history can never champion your causes and that history will never feel sorry for you. It is the price that is paid for day-to-day comfort and silence. And because of this price, all happinesses are sterile; all sadnesses go unpitied.”

“He was the same as everyone else: he carried his past inside him. There was no escape from it. No matter how hard you push it down, the truth always comes to the surface.”

“People who need to bully you are the easiest to push around.”

“Each new day is a blank page in the diary of your life. The secret of success is in turning that diary into the best story you possibly can.”

“A friend is one of the nicest things you can have, and one of the best things you can be.”

“Do you think we enjoy hearing about your brand-new million-dollar home when we can barely afford to eat Kraft Dinner sandwiches in our own grimy little shoe boxes and we're pushing thirty? A home you won in a genetic lottery, I might add, sheerly by dint of your having been born at the right time in history? You'd last about ten minutes if you were my age these days.”