It may be that even if half consciously, we choose our personalities to maintain a certain saving balance in the family's little universe.

Nobody dast blame this man. For a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back -- that's an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.

HALE, with a tasty love of intellectual pursuit

The need of man to wholly realize himself is the only fixed star.

It is rare for people to be asked the question which puts them squarely in front of themselves

And old Dave, he'd go up to his room, y'understand, put on his green velvet slippers - I'll never forget - and pick up his phone and call the buyers, and without leaving his room, at the age of eighty-four, he made his living. And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career a man could want.

A little man makes a mistake and they hang him by the thumbs; the big ones become ambassadors.