"In both children and adults, there can be a hard-to-deny link between a robust sense of hope and either work productivity or academic achievement."

"Learning to speak was the most remarkable thing you ever did."

"Spare a thought for the poor introverts among us. In a world of party animals and glad-handers, they're the ones who stand by the punch bowl. In a world of mixers and pub crawls, they prefer to stay home with a book. Everywhere around them, cell phones ring and e-mails chime and they just want a little quiet."

"It's far too much to say that effective hoping is the only - or even the biggest - part of what it takes to succeed. If 14% of business productivity can be attributed to hope, that means 86% is dependent on raw talent, fickle business cycles, the quality of the product you're selling, and often pure, dumb luck."

"One day I looked at something in myself that I had been avoiding because it was too painful. Yet once I did, I had an unexpected surprise. Rather than self-hatred, I was flooded with compassion for myself because I realized the pain necessary to develop that coping mechanism to begin with."

"It is a quiet truth that creativity is seeing what everyone has seen, but thinking what no one else thought — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"Men's men: gentle or simple, they're much of a muchness."

"It is a humble truth that creativity is seeing what everyone has seen, but thinking what no one else thought — an essential principle for the reflective life."