“A good story conveys a message that strengthens our values.”

“Employment is a condition of being. Unemployment is a period of transition. We bravely present ourselves as having value. It's a façade of projected personal confidence. And a stomach quivering with fear.”

“Grace is the face that love wears when it meets imperfection.”

“In the best of times, our days are numbered anyway. So it would be a crime against nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were designed in the first place: the opportunity to do good work, to enjoy friends, to fall in love, to hit a ball, and to bounce a baby.”

“I’ll tell them that I saw the guy who shot her, then.”The man arched a brow. “The one who turned into a dragon before your very eyes? Don’t you think a story like that might affect your credibility as a witness?”

“Few poets better convey the uneasy transition from Victorianism to Modernism than Thomas Hardy. His novels, written between 1870 and 1895, made him not only the recorder of his distinctive region of 'Wessex', but the explorer of the transition of lives and minds from the age of traditional values and religious certainties to the age of godlessness and modern tragedy, a transition sometimes described as 'the clash of the modern'.”

“There is no greatness apart from self control. Development that does not include self government will only guarantee our mediocrity.”