The only leverage the manufacturer can apply to the retailer is his relationship with the consumer. And the main element in profit growth is going to have to lie in making his brand more valuable to the retailer, through its being more valuable to the consumer. And that means his brand must be unique, it must have no adequate direct substitutes - because it is in this, after all, that value lies.

If you don’t have the time to do something right, where are you going to find the time to fix it?

I'd like to learn French well enough to write in that language.

For a moment he felt a wild hope: perhaps this really was a nightmare. Perhaps he would awake in his own bed, bathed in sweat, shaking, maybe even crying . . . but alive. Safe. Then he pushed the thought away. Its charm was deadly, its comfort fatal.

The good thing about being old, is you don’t have to worry about dying young.

The harder you had to work to open a package, the less you ended up caring about what was inside.

Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes.