“Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy then. Why? Reaction. A lifetime in a night. Gradually changes your character.”

“As you change your thoughts and your mental vision, you are changing your reality.”

“Any character who goes after a desire and is impeded is forced to struggle (otherwise the story is over.) And that struggle makes him change. So the ultimate goal of the dramatic code, and of the storyteller, is to present a change in a character or to illustrate why that change did not occur.”

“Money is good, but it is not all about a man. You will have successes and reversals, but remember it is your reaction to each of them that counts for your character.”

“You must build your character before the age of 40 because there is a destiny you must discover at the age of 40.”

“A half-century later, Mark Twain would say that the gold rush drastically changed the American character, ending the tradition of patient apprenticeships, the gradual mastery of self, talent, and money. Gold created the get-rich-quick mentality that has been with us ever since, most recently during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s.”