Best Development Quotes & Sayings

ReThink Training: The best process of learning is on the job, just-in-time, "nibble-knowledge" to incrementally transform mindsets and skillsets irrevocably. — Tony Dovale

The happiest life is that which constantly exercises and educates what is best in us. — Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Experts in literacy and child development have discovered that if children know eight nursery rhymes by heart by the time they're four years old, they're usually among the best readers by the time they're eight. — Mem Fox

Simply put, the best teachers believe that learning involves both personal and intellectual development and that neither the ability to think nor the qualities of being a mature human are immutable. People can change, and those changes
not just the accumulation of information
represent true learning. — Ken Bain

I have a feeling that art is something you do for yourself, and that any time you turn your decisions over to someone else you're postponing at best, your own development. The atmosphere of the workshop should be that of trying out one's own work and accepting the signals from others but not accepting the dictation of others because that is a violation of the spirit of art. Art can't be done by somebody else, it has got to be done by the artist. — William Stafford

Instead of promoting healthy development, they unconsciously undermine it, often with the belief that they are acting in their child's best interest. — Susan Forward

good mother will make a point of having sex with several different men, especially when she is pregnant, so that her child will enjoy the qualities (and paternal care) not merely of the best hunter, but also of the best storyteller, the strongest warrior and the most considerate lover. If this sounds silly, bear in mind that before the development of modern embryological studies, people had no solid evidence that babies are always sired by a single father rather than by many. — Yuval Noah Harari

When we have clarity on our destination and are grounded in our current reality, we are equipped to make the best decisions possible. — Michael Hyatt

The number of books students read ... is among the best indicators of student reading development. — Mike Schmoker

Morphlabs is excited about the OpenStack release of Essex. We believe that this release positions OpenStack to become the foundation for next generation dynamic cloud infrastructure. We are building a fully-converged private platform around Essex, leveraging best-of-breed cloud building blocks to deliver a high-performance, flexible solution. This release marks a major a proof point of OpenStack's commitment to open community development and pluggable APIs, which benefits the entire cloud ecosystem. — Winston Damarillo

For the best return on your money, pour your purse into your head. — Benjamin Franklin

Good" now is better than "Best" never. — Phillip Gary Smith

If you are not hungry for success, you will not make the best use of your time. It is simple and clear. People who are truly hungry for food never play with a meal when they see it. — Israelmore Ayivor

Providing all Latin-American children with the education and early childhood development that they need is in the best interest of all, so it has to be a priority for all of us, not only the government and civil society, but also the business sector. — Shakira

Newsmen have a very short attention span. It is a prerequisite in the business. That is why the news accounts of almost anything make sense to all ages up to the age of twelve. If one wishes to enjoy newspapers, it is wise to halt all intellectual development right at that age. The schools are doing their level best to achieve this goal. — John D. MacDonald

The best stories ever written are the these were inspired by it endings. — Sameh Elsayed

When a woman understands the uniqueness of the female brain - how to care for it, how to make the most of its strengths, how to overcome its challenges, how to fall in love with it, and ultimately, how to unleash its full power - there is no stopping her. In her personal development, at work, and in her relationships, she can bring the best of herself to her family, her community, and her planet. By contrast, a woman who is not caring optimally for her brain, who is not giving it the full range of nutrients, exercise, sleep, and emotional support that it needs, is squandering her most valuable resource. If you are not taking good care of your brain, you are at a significantly higher risk of brain fog, memory problems, low energy, distractibility, poor decisions, obesity, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. — Daniel G. Amen

When people are doing their utmost to upset you, it's probably best to just laugh at them. — Wayne Gerard Trotman

In order for us to use the very best judgment possible in spending the taxpayer's money intelligently, we just have to do a certain amount of this research and development work ourselves. We just have to keep our own hands dirty to command the professional respect of the contractor personnel engaged with actual design, shop and testing work. — Wernher Von Braun

In the years to come, some of our best minds will try to dig deeper into that computer program, to figure out its individual lines of code (the IF-THENS that we call genes), the products of those lines (what we call proteins), how all those lines of biological code fit together, and how they make room for nurture.

In the long run, the effects on society will be profound. Take, for example, the advances that our increasing understanding of genes will lead to in medicine. Because, as we have seen, the brain is built like the rest of the body, it is also amenable to many of the same types of treatment. For example, stem cell therapies originally developed for leukemia are being adapted to treat Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease. Gene therapies developed for cystic fibrosis may someday help treat brain tumors. Both work by harnessing the body's own toolkit for development. — Gary F. Marcus

Dare to be among the greatest. Even if you did not get the best, you will be above the good. — Israelmore Ayivor

The best government rests on the people, and not on the few, on persons and not on property, on the free development of public opinion and not on authority. — George Bancroft

I was encouraged to break all the rules but to take the best of philanthropy, the best of investing, and the best of development finance, and experiment with new ways to create this venture capital model of using philanthropy to back patient capital investments, and then build solutions that were measured in terms of the kind of impact and change they were making on people's lives and in the world, not just on the financial return. — Jacqueline Novogratz

Whilst personal effectiveness focuses more on your personal development goals as you become the best practitioner in your area of specialty; leadership excellence shifts the focus to your leadership development in making a difference to the greater circle within your areas of influence and beyond. Leadership excellence focuses on areas of concern on behalf of others because a leader is expected to grow from personal effectiveness to begin making a significant impact on the world around them. — Archibald Marwizi

Seva, love and sacrifice are the basic prerequisites for human development. If you agree with this precept, nurture good will towards all and help people to the best of your ability without expecting anything in return. Don't think, 'I will render service only when the organizers agree with me and not otherwise.' Dear brother! In that case, you will not be able to serve. You will only nurture your ego by making others agree with you. — Asaram

The philosophic goal in China was a search for harmony and perfection, not the discovery of truth by reasoning. In China's Confucian society, the best pathway to perfection was the development of a virtuous life. — Patrick Mendis

Staying alive is not enough to guarantee survival. Development is the best way to ensure survival. — Liu Cixin

Everyone deserves the best start in life, which is what UNICEF is working to provide the world's most vulnerable children. Education is essential to a child's development. I hope that as an Ambassador I can encourage people to join UNICEF's mission to make education a reality for children throughout the world. — Clay Aiken

Do what is best for most people, not just a few. Prevent your elites and growing middle class, those who often benefit most from growth and development, from turning into a special interests group that blocks reforms. — Sri Mulyani Indrawati

God is the best makeup Artist I have ever seen however, you may get an honorable mention for sprucing. — Johnnie Dent Jr.

The best of all leaders is the one who helps people so that eventually they don't need him. — Lao-Tzu

Your targets empower you as they allow yourself to bring out the best within you. — Deepak Burfiwala

Just make as much money as you can, but try your best not to rob or get robbed, it will sweep all that you have and leave your hands empty. — Auliq Ice

Once upon a time, began the story of you.
Many perilous, wonderful, harrowing, brilliant, delightful, profound things happened.
And yet - the most exciting twists and best turns are yet to come. And it absolutely does not matter how old or young you are.
Like a bright carpet of wonders, enjoy the unrolling of your story. — Vera Nazarian

Oh that God would give every mother a vision of the glory and splendor of the work that is given to her when a babe is place in her bosom to be nursed and trained! Could she have but one glimpse in to the future of that life as it reaches on into eternity; could she look into its soul to see its possibilities; could she be made to understand her own personal responsibility for the training of this child, for the development of its life, and for its destiny,--she would see that in all God's world there is no other work so noble and so worthy of her best powers, and she would commit to no others hands the sacred and holy trust given to her. — J.R. Miller

None of the male characters are as powerful or as interesting as the four central female characters. The men work best as representations of the current stage of a particular female's psyche. The men function as catalysts, and are certainly important to the development of the story, but the relationships are not the goal. I do not see romance as being what's central to the success of PRETTY LITTLE LIARS. — Norman Buckley

Of the twelve, the most powerful questions (to employees, guaging their satisfaction with their employers) are those witha combination of the strongest links to the most business outcomes (to include profitability). Armed with this perspective, we now know that the following six ar ethe most powerful questions:
1) Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2) Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
3) Do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
4) In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for good work?
5) Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
6) Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
As a manager, if you want to know what you should do to build a strong and productive workplace, securing 5s to these six questions would be an excellent place to start. — Marcus Buckingham

This would be the worst birthday of his life. Vladimir's best friend Baobab was down in Florida covering his rent, doing unspeakable things with unmentionable people. Mother, roused by the meager achievements of Vladimir's first quarter-century, was officially on the warpath. And, in possibly the worst development yet, 1993 was the Year of the Girlfriend. A downcast, heavyset American girlfriend whose bright orange hair was strewn across his Alphabet City hovel as if cadre of Angora rabbits had visited. A girlfriend whose sickly-sweet incense and musky perfume coated Vladimir's unwashed skin, perhaps to remind him of what he could expect on this, the night of his birthday: Sex. Every week, once a week, they had to have sex, as both he and this large pale woman, this Challah, perceived that without weekly sex their relationship would fold up according to some unspecified law of relationships. — Gary Shteyngart

Practically all of the successful Negroes in this country are of the uneducated type or of that of Negroes who have had no formal education at all. The large majority of the Negroes who have put on the finishing touches of our best colleges are all but worthless in the development of their people. If after leaving school they have the opportunity to give out to Negroes what traducers of the race would like to have it learn such persons may thereby earn a living at teaching or preaching what they have been taught but they never become a constructive force in the development of the race. The so-called school, then, becomes a questionable factor in the life of this despised people. As another has well said, to handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching. It kills one's aspirations and dooms him to — Carter G. Woodson

There are many outsiders that actively try to halt every natural resource development project in Alaska. Many of these same people have never even been to Alaska, yet they claim to know what's best for us. — Lisa Murkowski

Americans
must recognize that a highly sophisticated, highly advanced po
litical system, which required many centuries to develop in the
West, may not be best for other nations which have far different
traditions and are still in an earlier stage of development. What
matters is that these governments are consciously, deliberately and programmatically developing in the direction of greater
liberty, greater abundance, broader choice and increased popular involvement in the process of government. — Richard M. Nixon

The guiding visionary behind Project Spectrum is Howard Gardner, a psychologist at the Harvard School of Education.7 "The time has come," Gardner told me, "to broaden our notion of the spectrum of talents. The single most important contribution education can make to a child's development is to help him toward a field where his talents best suit him, where he will be satisfied and competent. We've completely lost sight of that. Instead we subject everyone to an education where, if you succeed, you will be best suited to be a college professor. And we evaluate everyone along the way according to whether they meet that narrow standard of success. We should spend less time ranking children and more time helping them to identify their natural competencies and gifts, and cultivate those. There are hundreds and hundreds of ways to succeed, and many, many different abilities that will help you get there. — Daniel Goleman

The best way to develop people is to constantly get them out of their comfort zone. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

Training and development: The best development programmes change the way people see themselves — John Bright

Self-reliance is an America virtue but not a biblical value. Solomon wrote, "The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice." (Proverbs 12:15) The word 'listen' carries with it the meaning of seeking out as well as receiving advice. A lot of pain can be prevented if leaders would just check in with their coach before a making a big decision. — Gary Rohrmayer

Charm might be described as enlightened self-interest, a development of one's best self ... In the simplest possible terms, I think genuine charm is an unmotivated interest in others. — Arlene Francis

Given the incredible power of these new technologies, shouldn't we be asking how we can best coexist with them? And if our own extinction is a likely, or even possible, outcome of our technological development, shouldn't we proceed with great caution? — Bill Joy

The work environment can bring out the 'best' or the 'worst' in you. — Abhishek Ratna

Theirs was that substantial affection which arises (if any arises at all) when the two who are thrown together begin first by knowing the rougher sides of each other's character, and not the best till further on, the romance growing up in the interstices of a mass of hard prosaic reality. This good-fellowship - camaraderie - usually occurring through similarity of pursuits, is unfortunately seldom superadded to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labours, but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy circumstance permits its development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death - that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually called by the name is evanescent as steam. — Thomas Hardy

You need to change, renew, and rejuvenate yourself. Put your best foot forward in all that you do; you will develop an unmatched passion. — Farshad Asl

As industries migrate toward the Far East, the future of many Western cities will no longer lie in manufacturing products but ideas and patents. Young, mobile elites can choose where they want to live, and they can easily move, which means that cities are involved in a heated competition for the best people. Only the most attractive cities can benefit from this development. — Charles Landry

The novel has become the leading hero in the drama of literary development in our time precisely because it best of all reflects the tendencies of a new world still in the making; it is, after all, the only genre born of this new world and in total affinity with it. — Mikhail Bakhtin

In The Descent of Man he gave some powerful pages to illustrate its proper, wide sense. He pointed out how, in numberless animal societies, the struggle between separate individuals for the means of existence disappears, how struggle is replaced by co-operation, and how that substitution results in the development of intellectual and moral faculties which secure to the species the best conditions for survival. — Pyotr Kropotkin

Lowell's best friend was the heroically moustached art director of a tobacco magazine that published in the same building where Lowell worked at plumbing. His name was Harry Balmer, and despite the evidence of his moustache he was nervous, compulsive, and wracked with small fears. He looked his best from across a wide room; the closer you got to him, the more he seemed to fall apart into a mass of twitches and gnawed finernails and the clearer it became that this big, smart-looking moustache was a kind of bush he was trying to hide behind. — L.J. Davis

The large majority of the Negroes who have put on the finishing touches of our best colleges are all but worthless in the development of their people. — Carter G. Woodson

The best yardstick for our progress is not other people, but ourselves. Am I better than I was yesterday? This is the only question worth asking. As long as you go to bed at night a better practitioner than the one who woke up that morning, you have succeeded. Your worth should have nothing to do with how your progress stacks up relative to another. — Chris Matakas

The arts have long been an integral and vibrant part of our nation's cultural heritage. In its many forms, art enables us to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and of our society. Providing us with a unique way to learn about people of other cultures, it allows us to discover all that we have in common. At its best, art can beautify our cities, encourage economic development and social change, and profoundly affect the ways we live our lives. — William J. Clinton

The development of our spiritual nature should concern us most. Spirituality is the highest acquisition of the soul, the divine in man; 'the supreme, crowning gift that makes him king of all created things.' It is the consciousness of victory over self and of communion with the infinite. It is spirituality alone which really gives one the best in life. — David O. McKay

That's the nice thing about doing stand-up. There's no development, you just go out there and get an immediate response as to whether something is good or bad. Getting a laugh is the best measure of how well you're doing. — Paul Reiser

I owe what is best in my own development to the impression made by Kant's works, the sacred writings of the Hindus, and Plato. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The built environment is shaped not only by private sector development pratices, but also by the honored and fascinating field of planning. Planners in towns, counties, regional and state government, consulting firms and in economic development agencies translate ideas about human settlements into concrete designs. They can be generalists or specialize in transportation, urban centers, rural land use, economic development and more. At its best, the planning profession aims to mediate tensions between people, social groups, and the natural environment by creating an orderly process for determining common values, shared priorities and elegant principles for transcending conflicts. Therefore planners may find themselves caught in some of the most challenging political crossfire to be found. But they also have the opportunity to educate many sectors and communities. — Melissa Everett

The people of Missouri said they expect their elected leaders to support public schools because they know that education is the best economic development tool there is. — Jay Nixon

One thing I have learned for sure. A woman is like a living Violin. She would only offer herself to this who can get the best tunes out of her. — Sameh Elsayed

Make Hard Work Your Best Friend. Hard Work becomes Smart Work; Smart Work becomes Easy Work. — Vid Lamonte' Buggs Jr.

Climate change is destroying our path to sustainability. Ours is a world of looming challenges and increasingly limited resources. Sustainable development offers the best chance to adjust our course. — Ban Ki-moon

Of all work-schools, a good farm is probably the best for motor development. — G. Stanley Hall

An investment in your personal development is the best investment you can make. — Jim Rohn

Giving governors more leeway in administering health care could represent a small, positive development in the ongoing saga of Obamacare. Unfortunately, instead of choosing flexibility, President Obama and his left-leaning advisers always default to rigid 'Washington knows best' answers. — Fred Upton

I'm a bit obsessive. I've just bought this Wi-Fi radio, which can pick up 7,500 stations from all over the world. I'm boring my wife to death with it. I've got a thing about technology, so I've got four sat-nav systems and loads of gadgets, including a 100% accurate watch. Any new development and I'm there buying it. My best trait is that I'm happy and optimistic. — Tony Blackburn

When we encounter a friend who's depressed or afraid, we automatically try to take that distress away and to cheer the person up. While we may be operating with the best of intentions, this Band-Aid approach only reinforces the condition. Unless people experience their pain completely and begin to undrstand it, they will not only fail to overcome it, they'll also lose the opportunity of using it to advance their own growth. Pain can get you somewhere, and that somewhere can be a life-enhancing experience. We all tend to forget that pain can signal change. Alleviating the symptoms of pain in someone, without helping them to get at its underlying source, robs them of an important to for self-exploration. It's also a way of placating that reinforces the person'S need to cave in and succumb to another. This attitude undermines healthy character development and contributes to psychospiritual, moral, and ultimately social decay. — Adele Von Rust McCormick

According to the Greek philosophers, that we become truly human by devoting time to self-development-to learning, to the arts, to political activity. In fact the Greek term for leisure, scholea, is the root from which our word "school" comes from, since the idea was that the best use for leisure was to study. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

You must showcase your work, achievements and performance in the best possible manner. — Abhishek Ratna

Why do they [Americans] quarrel, why do they hate Negroes, Indians, even Germans, why do they not have science and poetry commensurate with themselves, why are there so many frauds and so much nonsense? I cannot soon give a solution to these questions ... It was clear that in the United States there was a development not of the best, but of the middle and worst sides of European civilization; the notorious general voting, the tendency to politics ... all the same as in Europe. A new dawn is not to be seen on this side of the ocean. — Dmitri Mendeleev

It is absurd and ridiculous to want to remain as one was. Indeed, not to change shows that one has a nature incapable of development. It implies a sort of moral torpor, an atrophy of one's nature not to get older as one gets older. And one of the biggest, and perhaps best effects of age is to give one tolerance, to make one realize that it takes all sorts to make a world." He — E.F. Benson

One of the best ways countries can combat poverty is to use development assistance to promote a growing private sector, in which the poor can fully participate. — John Danilovich

Rest assured that whatever station of life we are placed, princely or lowly, it contains the lessons and experiences necessary at the moment for our evolution, and gives us the best advantage for the development of ourselves. — Edward Bach

Service of self is best developed in dealings of service to others. — Tyler J. Hebert

Every man's powers have relation to some kind of work; and whenever he finds that kind of work which he can do best
that to which his powers are best adapted
he finds that which will give him the best development, and that by which he can best build up, or make, his manhood. — J.G. Holland

If we are going to see real development in the world then our best investment is WOMEN! — Desmond Tutu

you give your best for today, you create a greater tomorrow. — Lailah Gifty Akita

spirit of capitalism is best understood as part of the development of rationalism as a whole, — Max Weber

The best part of learning is sharing what you know. — Vaughn K. Lauer

Savages have often been likened to children, and the comparison is not only correct but also highly instructive. Many naturalists consider that the early condition of the individual indicates that of the race,-that the best test of the affinities of a species are the stages through which it passes. So also it is in the case of man; the life of each individual is an epitome of the history of the race, and the gradual development of the child illustrates that of the species. — John Lubbock

One of the newest figures to emerge on the world stage in recent years is the social entrepreneur. This is usually someone who burns with desire to make a positive social impact on the world, but believes that the best way of doing it is, as the saying goes, not by giving poor people a fish and feeding them for a day, but by teaching them to fish, in hopes of feeding them for a lifetime. I have come to know several social entrepreneurs in recent years, and most combine a business school brain with a social worker's heart. The triple convergence and the flattening of the world have been a godsend for them. Those who get it and are adapting to it have begun launching some very innovative projects. — Thomas L. Friedman

It is easy to confuse hope with faith. Yet faith is blind; faith does not have eyes that see, nor does it need them. Faith is an inner sureness and is an invaluable ally to the spiritual seeker. In no way would we discourage any from the cultivation of the faculty of faith, for it is one of the great tools of learning available to you upon the spiritual path. Yet there are situations in which a focused vision has its place and is far more effective than blind faith. That faculty is hope. Hope is the development of faith upon a specific area of intent or interest so that there is a vision which is developed which affirms all that is best in a situation, all that is requisite in an outcome. — Carla L. Rueckert

Coaching is a form of professional development that brings out the best in people, uncovers strengths and skills, builds effective teams, cultivates compassion, and builds emotionally resilient educators. Coaching at its essence is the way that human beings, and individuals, have always learned best. — Elena Aguilar

Design is all about relationships. Unfortunately, many designers don't fully appreciate this. Some of the best design work I've ever done was drinking coffee or beers with engineers, marketing people, and business development hustlers. And I wholeheartedly mean design work. — Daniel Burka

Coachable people seek out those who speak truth to them, even if it is a painful truth, because it protects them and it makes them a better person and leader. — Gary Rohrmayer

When I think about little girls in the moment of turning into big girls (it is no slow timid development but something strangely sudden), I always have to imagine an ocean behind them, or a grave eternal plain, or something else you don't actually see with your eyes but can only sense, and that only in the deep and silent hours. Then I see the big girls as being exactly as big as I was used to the little childlike girls being small
and Heaven above knows why, that's just how I want to see them. There is a reason for everything. But the best things that happen, after all, are the ones which hide their deeper reason with both hands, whether out of modesty or because they don't want to be betrayed. — Rainer Maria Rilke

The best places to live, work, and visit are those places that are willing to uphold their standards in the face of pressure to allow lowest common denominator development ... Successful communities understand that when they say no to development that is contrary to the long-term health of their community, they will almost always get better development in its place. — Ed McMahon

Acknowledging, as a fact, the equal rights of all its members to the treasures accumulated in the past, it no longer recognizes a division between exploited and exploiters, governed and governors, dominated and dominators, and it seeks to establish a certain harmonious compatibility in its midst-not by subjecting all its members to an -authority that is fictitiously supposed to represent society, not by trying to establish uniformity, but by urging all men to develop free initiative, free action, free association. It seeks the most complete development of individuality combined with the highest development of voluntary association in all its aspects, in all possible degrees, for all imaginable aims; ever changing, ever modified associations which carry in themselves the elements of their durability and constantly assume new forms, which answer best to the multiple aspirations of all. — Pyotr Kropotkin

Democracy is, in essence, a form of non-violent conflict management. If war is the worst enemy of development, healthy and balanced development is the best form of conflict prevention. — Kofi Annan

I have yet to see any method which can predict a man's development more than a short time ahead. And even if we could predict human growth, we should have no right to play providence. However 'scientific' the method, it would still at best work with 60% or 70% of accuracy; and no man has a right to dispose of other people's lives and careers on probability.34 — Kenneth Hopper

Teacher training institutes should impact training of our nation's teachers in a manner that encourages them to support the holistic development of the child and to continuously refine their own skills to create the best possible learning environments for our children. — Shaheen Mistri

In horror, character development is often pushed aside in favor of the shock value. The best genre movies to me are movies like The Shining. You had a connection to the characters in that film. — Joshua Leonard

To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required - not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. — John F. Kennedy

When you work under the cloud of anxiety, the best strategy is to play it safe, because if (when!) it fails, you'll be blameless. — Seth Godin

You will often encounter logic that is hard to classify as being suitable for the view or the controller, and it can be difficult to work out what to do. My advice is to not worry about it. Make a best guess in order to preserve development momentum and move the logic later if need be. If you really can't make a call, then put the logic in the controller; that will turn out to be the right decision about 60 percent of the time. — Adam Freeman

What we want to see is the development of human rights and greater democracy, not just because it is our system but because we think that's the best way that economic and political development go hand in hand. — Tony Blair

They were ... no ordinary group, gathering together to kill an evening, to seek refuge from critical husbands and demanding children while idly discussing their new best-seller. They met because literature was their shared passion. Books were as important to them as breath itself. They shared the ability to immerse themselves in the lives of fictional characters, to argue passionately about the development of plots, about decisions taken, dilemmas resolved. — Gloria Goldreich