"No man needs sympathy because he has to work, because he has a burden to carry. Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing."
— Theodore Roosevelt

"Is there no context for our lives? No song, no literature, no poem full of vitamins, no history connected to experience that you can pass along to help us start strong? You are an adult. The old one, the wise one. Stop thinking about saving your face. Think of our lives and tell us your particularized world. Make up a story. Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created. We will not blame you if your reach exceeds your grasp; if love so ignites your words they go down in flames and nothing is left but their scald. Or if, with the reticence of a surgeon's hands, your words suture only the places where blood might flow. We know you can never do it properly - once and for all. Passion is never enough; neither is skill. But try. For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul. You, old woman, blessed with blindness, can speak the language that tells us what only language can: how to see without pictures. Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation."
— Toni Morrison

"Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something
(All The King's Men)"
— Robert Penn Warren

"Without knowing it, the adults in our lives practiced a most productive kind of behavior modification. After our chores and household duties were done we were give "permission" to read. In other words, our elders positioned reading as a privilege - a much sought-after prize, granted only to those goodhardworkers who earned it. How clever of them."
— Mildred Armstrong Kalish (Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression)

"I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House-- with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."
— John F. Kennedy

""We're two lonely people having supper." "Exactly," said Bunny. "That's a date." -- from 'Olive Kitteridge' by Elizabeth Strout."
— Elizabeth Strout