“This was the English passion, not for self-improvement or culture or wit, but for DIY, Do It Yourself, for bigger and better houses with more mod cons, the painstaking accumulation of comfort and, with it, status - the concrete display of earned cash.”

“The principle is competing against yourself. It's about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before”

“Not every change is an improvement but every improvement is a change; you can't do anything BETTER unless you can manage to do it DIFFERENTLY, you've got to let yourself do better than other people!”

“A smile can reassure another, provide comfort to uncomfortable situations, and display personal self-confidence for all to see.”

“The more grotesque your boss's pay and the less he has do to earn it, the bigger the motivation for you to work with the aim of being promoted to what he has.”

“As long as you were comfortable with yourself and believed in yourself, then you could just throw out all that nonsense of worrying about your status and "success" and other people's opinions.”