This sense of the safe-deposit box as a totem of responsible security inspired me to rent a box myself shortly after the birth of our first child….

Making resolutions is a cleansing ritual of self-assessment and repentance that demands personal honesty and, ultimately, reinforces humility. Breaking them is part of the cycle.

There's no sense talking about priorities. Priorities reveal themselves. We're all transparent against the face of the clock.

Don't waste your breath proclaiming what's really important to you. How you spend your time says it all.

You can't buy time or save it, common idioms notwithstanding. You can only spend it.

Fear of failure is a ticket to mediocrity. If you’re not failing from time to time, you’re not pushing yourself. And if you’re not pushing yourself, you’re coasting.

I think it's weird that people think someone who's not a politician could be the mayor of Chicago.

Empathy is the greatest virtue. From it, all virtues flow. Without it, all virtues are an act.

How a person looks at life is a pristine example of how that person is going to live life.

Metaphor is a slippery eel, if it wasn't for its shock I'd stick to the easy catch of prose.

Denial does not change reality for everyone else. Only for the one denying and those who are foolish enough to believe the fantasy.

For the cause that lacks assistance The wrong that needs resistance For the future in the distance And the good that I can do.

Elite is not a bad word, it's an aspirational one.

In Italian there is an expression: We don't sleep on the fame.

I reckon there's as much human nature in some folks as there is in others, if not more.

Strength is the product of struggle, you must do what others don't to achieve what others won't.

His eyes were green chips of flame, and the growl was so thick it blurred the air around him, the sound of a very pissed off skinchanger.

We must hang on to the idea that we can actually change things. That's the sort of environment that Joe finds himself in, in Young Adam.