Alexandros of Antioch took a block of marble and chiseled away from it everything that was not his masterpiece, the Venus de Milo. If you will chisel away one fault from your character every day, you may discover - a) that you're actually a statue of Margaret Thatcher. b) that you're still just a block of marble. c) that there are pigeon droppings on your shoes. d) that you, too, are a hidden masterpiece.

All is illusion, although as long as there's an illusion that the kids need to be fed, all might as well be reality.

There is an instinct in a woman to love most her own child - and an instinct to make any child who needs her love, her own.

God sends the dawn that we might see the might-have-beens that still might be.

In a dark moment I ask, "How can anyone bring a child into this world?" And the answer rings clear, "Because there is no other world, and because the child has no other way into it."

There is an ongoing battle between conscience and self-interest in which, at some point, we have to take sides.

When compiling his great dictionary, the young Noah Webster travels to the Himalayas, where he climbs to the cave of the world's wises man. 'O, great sage,' he says, 'tell me the meaning of life.' The sage sits Noah at his feet and, with great solemnity, commences to unfold the meaning of life. When finished, he places a hand on the young man's shoulder and says, 'Do you have any other questions, my son?' Noah flips a page in his notebook and says, 'You wouldn't know the meaning of lift, would you?'