“The greatest thing a man can possibly do in this world is to make the most possible out of the stuff that has been given him. This is success, and there is no other. It is not a question of what someone else can do or become which every youth should ask himself, but what can I do? How can I develop myself into the grandest possible manhood?”

“The greatest thing a man can do in this world, is to make the most possible out of the stuff that has been given him. This is success, and there is no other.”

“What makes my life my own is ultimately the sheer fact that it is mine to live, mine to make something of, in the face of my possible non-existence. Every other possibility is something that I may be free not to do, and that someone else may be able to do just as well as I can. But my death is a possibility that necessarily faces me alone: no one can face it for me.”

“The rule for finding plots for character-centered novels, which is to ask: 'So what's the worst possible thing I can do to *this* guy?' And then do it.”

“In theory I can do almost anything; certainly I have been told how. In practice I do as little as possible. I pretend to myself that I would be quite happy in a hermit's cave, living on gruel, if someone else would make the gruel. Gruel, like so many other things, is beyond me.”

“Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.”