I may be too cynical," Catherine says. - Richard Ford

Finally I do like best of all stories whose necessity is in the implied recognition that someplace out there there exists an urgency — a chaos — , an insanity, a misrule of some dire sort which can end life as we know it but for the fact that this very story is written, this order found, this style determined, the worst averted, and we are beneficiaries of that order by being readers.

Some people want to be bank presidents. Other people want to rob banks.

What I know is, you have chance in life — of surviving it — if you tolerate loss well; manage not to be a cynic through it all; to subordinate, as Ruskin implied, to keep proportion, to connect the unequal things into a whole that preserves the good, even if admittedly good is often not simple to find.