“How do you control another person? Two ways. Trust, or fear. People and animals will follow you if they trust you. But trust must be earned. And it is earned by people who are good and great. So if you’re neither good nor great, you can only use fear...”

“Trust is weird,” my mother said. “People give it too easily, most of the time. Because somebody is attractive, they expect him to be good or honest. Or like pushy salesmen—somebody who carefully makes you feel like you’re emotionally obligated to trust them. Like you’re the rude one if you don’t. Trust is really something that needs to be earned. Hard earned. If somebody every says, ‘Don’t you trust me?’ Just say, “No, as a matter of fact.”

“Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.”

“Earning trust is not easy, nor is it cheap, nor does it happen quickly. Earning trust is hard and demanding work. Trust comes only with genuine effort, never with a lick and a promise.”

“How can you live without trusting people? There are more people who are good than people who are bad!”

“And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them, too —even when you’re in the dark. Even when you’re falling.”