"Managing your career is like investing. The degree of difficulty does not count. So you can save yourself money and pain by getting on the right train."

Short sale Q&A from WSJ

Placing a BidOn a Short Sale
By June Fletcher
Question: We are first-time home buyers and found a beautiful house being sold as a short sale. It seems too good to be true, and our real estate agent referred to short sales as playing a game of roulette. Are the risks involved with a short sale too much to handle?

Notice that I didn't put falling in love on this list, since that's what you shouldn't do with this house. A short sale, which involves buying a house for less than the amount the seller owes the lender, can be time-consuming, frustrating, and --- if the lender refuses your offer -- ultimately unsuccessful. If the agent you've been using doesn't want to get involved, ask him or her to refer you to someone who specializes in this sort of work. You also need to hire an attorney experienced in this kind of transaction.
But when home values are dropping, like they are in many places today, and the owner hasn't built up much equity, that's not an option. So some lenders will accept less than the amount owed to avoid the hassle and expense of auctioning the house, providing the owner proves that he doesn't have other assets to make up what he owes.
Even with experienced people at your side, it pays to arm yourself with facts before you make an offer. Don't assume that the house is a bargain, since the owner may have bought the house at the peak of the housing cycle and may owe so much that he can only discount it to current market prices. Find out what comparable houses are selling for, whether a foreclosure notice has been filed for the property, who owns the loan or loans, and how much is owed -- you'll have to deal with them all.
The seller may eagerly accept your offer, but he isn't the final arbiter of the deal -- the note holders are. So make your offer contingent on the acceptance of the lender or lenders. Since the lenders want to know that you can back up your offer, include as much information as you can on your financial resources, as well as a preapproval letter from a lender.
Although the property may be advertised as-is, make sure the deal gives you the right to have and approve home and pest inspections by qualified professionals. Short sellers usually have given up maintaining their homes; you need to know what other expenses to expect.
Also, place a time limit on your offer -- since lenders will sometimes drag their feet, hoping to get a better deal. Short sales rarely take a short time to complete, but you shouldn't wait forever.

Kahlil Gibran quotes :

• I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, Iam ungrateful to these teachers.



• Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.
• Yes, there is a Nirvanah; it is leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem.
• An eye for an eye, and the whole world would be blind.
• And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
• Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.



• Faith is an oasis in the heart which can never be reached by the caravan of thinking.



• Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity



• Hallow the body as a temple to comeliness and sanctify the heart as a sacrifice to love; love recompenses the adorers.



• If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember.



• If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don't, they never were.



• Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.
• Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
• Nor shall derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity, for they shall live forever. Forever.
• Of life's two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer's hand.
• Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.
• Safeguarding the rights of others is the most noble and beautiful end of a human being.
• There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.
• What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?
• Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.
• Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and take alms of those who work with joy.
• Your daily life is your temple. When you enter into it take with you your all.
• Your friend is your needs answered.

Another few lines about Templeton

Templeton is described as “one of the handful of true investment greats in a field crowded with mediocrity and bloated reputations.” He believes any investor would be foolish to restrict his investments to his home country. Seek out the world’s best investments, he advises, wherever they reside. In the 1950s, he poured shareholders’ money into the German and Japanese stock markets. With the wounds of WWII still fresh, investing in Japan was about as popular with Americans then as the idea of funding the Taliban today. But as these battered economies were gradually rebuilt, his investment returns were substantial. Today he still favors the investment outlook for emerging markets, particularly China. At the height of the Internet bubble, Templeton sold short dozens of young technology companies just before their shares came out of “lock-up,” the six-month cooling off period following an IPO. He made over $80 million in a matter of weeks. He still calls it “the easiest money I ever made.”
Templeton knows what it means to be a true contrarian. “To buy when others are despondently selling and to sell when others are avidly buying requires the greatest fortitude… and pays the greatest reward.” Wise words for those contemplating what to do in today’s volatile markets.

Templeton quotes social reformer Henry Beecher, “No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.” Templeton is a great believer that true wealth doesn’t come from making money, but from fulfilling a purpose outside ourselves, whether that’s exercising our talents, raising our kids to be happy, productive adults, or contributing to our communities in some meaningful way. As Templeton is fond of saying, “Happiness pursued eludes, happiness given returns.” “We’ve made you a few dollars?” I asked.He touched my arm, smiled and said “Oh, I’ve been far too fortunate in this life for money to make much difference.” What a charming answer…

Put beautifully as always by Buffett.

TORONTO (Reuters) - But he warned that the U.S. dollar will continue to slide unless the country can rein in its yawning trade deficit -- the "biggest factor" behind the decline. Still, he said, the U.S. economy will "do very well over time."
Buffett, appeared to see irony in the fact that many of the banks who marketed complex investments which have now crashed are bearing much of the fallout.
"It's sort of a little poetic justice, in that the people that brewed this toxic Kool-Aid found themselves drinking a lot of it in the end".

Buffett said that the turmoil that has rocked the U.S. economy in recent months has imbued the markets with a healthy degree of caution, while the rate-cutting response from central bankers has ensured that cheap money remains available for borrowing.
"I wouldn't quite call it a credit crunch. Funds are available," Buffett said during a question and answer session. "Money is available, and it's really quite cheap because of the lowering of rates that has taken place."
He added: "What has happened is a repricing of risk and an unavailability of what I might call 'dumb money,' of which there was plenty around a year ago."
PBTS RULES Buffett tends to favor companies with relatively simple businesses, strong management, consistent earnings, good returns on equity, and little debt.

Hilarious article in the LA times today..

Perhaps a bit too stimulated - Joel Stein
The government should not be in charge of the economy. The government is super-insecure and desperate to be liked. So when the government senses you might blame it for something -- such as the fact that you spent $1 million on a three-bedroom house, and now you owe a ridiculous $1 million for a lousy three-bedroom house -- it panics and sends you a small check in the mail. No reasonable person would give us more money after what we've done with ours. They would tell us to put some cash in the bank and stop using the AmEx to make every appliance in our house either flat or made of stainless steel, as if we were preparing to trap "Superman II" villains.

But the government doesn't want us to bank that money. It believes we will spend the money, and that will make our houses worth a lot again. We would then buy clothes at Bebe, and the person who owns Bebe would buy the crappy house I overpaid for and get me out of the financial predicament. This might soften the recession if Milton Friedman hadn't proved 50 years ago that most people base spending decisions on long-term income projections. Unless we find a new bubble to invest in we're not going to spend our way out of this recession. We got here for the same reason people always get in trouble : We got over-excited. We ignored centuries of data saying real estate is a worse investment than stocks, and instead based our investment strategy on the fact that our neighbor just sold his house for a serious ton of money. We need to prevent our government from going deeper into debt, thus further devaluing our currency. So homeowners need to accept that they're not moving into a bigger house in three years, stock owners have to learn that their portfolios are going down for a while, and large tech companies have to stop paying hundreds of millions for social networking sites that kids get sick of after a while. An empire that believes spending is a patriotic act is perilously close to its end. But at least we will have left future civilizations the invention of the 10-year interest-only adjustable-rate sub-prime mortgage.

Wonderful article in the Washington Post today by the Nickel and Dimed author.

While fortunes were being made in the time it takes to say "IPO," my $6-$8-an-hour co-workers lunched on hot dog buns because that was all they could afford and, in some cases, fretted about whether they could find a safe place to sleep.
We like to attribute our high productivity to technological advances and better education. But a revealing 2001 study by McKinsey & Co. also credited America's productivity growth to "managerial . . . innovations" and cited Wal-Mart as a model performer, meaning that our productivity also relies on fiendish schemes to extract more work for less pay. Yes, you can generate more output per apparent hour of work by falsifying time records, speeding up assembly lines, doubling workloads and cutting back on breaks. That may look good from the top, but at the middle and the bottom, it can feel a lot like pain.
The old liberal certainty was that "full employment" would create a workers' paradise, with higher wages and bargaining power for the little guy and gal. What the liberals weren't counting on was a depressed minimum wage, weak unions and a witch's brew of management strategies to hold wages and salaries down.
I could see this when I was doing research for a book on white-collar unemployment in 2004. I met laid-off people who'd been searching for a job for over a year and ended up taking low-wage work as big-box sales clerks or even janitors.

A century ago, Henry Ford realized that his company would only prosper if his own workers earned enough to buy Fords. But, too many of our employers today haven't figured out that their cruelly low wages would eventually curtail their own growth and profits.

TAX REPORT By TOM HERMAN
High Earners Face Surge in Tax Audits
The IRS is turning up the heat on high-income taxpayers, especially those who work for themselves. IRS officials say audits of taxpayers making $100,000 or more rose 14% last year from 2006. Recent IRS data also show a 29% increase in audits of people making $200,000 or more -- and an 84% surge in audits of those with incomes of $1 million or more.

IRS research indicates much of the tax-noncompliance is committed by self-employed workers, such as consultants and small-business owners, whose taxes aren't withheld from their pay and whose income isn't reported separately to the government. By contrast, compliance is much higher among people whose pay is reported by their employers and whose taxes are withheld from their pay.
This year, "we will continue to focus on audits of high-income individuals," Linda Stiff, the IRS's acting commissioner, said in an interview. She also says IRS agents are intensifying their focus on "abusive" tax shelters, loosely defined as transactions with no real business purpose other than to avoid taxes.
In addition, agents have increased audits of taxpayers involved in partnerships and businesses organized as "S corporations." With a typical S corporation, income isn't taxed at the corporate level. Instead, profits and losses flow through to shareholders, who are supposed to pay taxes at their own individual rates.

For the vast majority of taxpayers, the odds of getting audited remain quite low. Only about 1% of all individual income-tax returns filed in each of the past few years have been audited. But the chances of attracting the IRS's attention now are significantly higher than they were just a few years ago.
In fiscal 2007, the IRS examined a total of nearly 1.4 million individual income-tax returns. By contrast, the IRS audited only 617,765 returns in fiscal 2000. The IRS's "coverage" rate -- audits divided by total number of returns filed the previous year -- has also been rising in recent years. For fiscal 2007, it stood at 1.03%, up from 0.98% the prior year and 0.49% in 2000. Even so, it's lower than where it was as recently as 1997.
IRS coverage rates are rising especially rapidly for higher-income taxpayers:
The IRS audited 31,382 returns with incomes of $1 million and higher in fiscal 2007, up from 17,015 the prior year. The coverage rate rose to 9.25% from 6.30%.
The IRS audited 113,105 returns with income of $200,000 and higher, up from 87,558 the prior year. The coverage rate: 2.87%, up from 2.57%.
The IRS audited 293,188 returns with income of $100,000 and higher, up from 257,851. The coverage rate: 1.77%, up from 1.67%.
The IRS relies on numerous techniques to choose which returns are audited. Many returns are selected on the basis of a secret computerized-scoring system that the IRS recently has updated, which is based on a continuing research project involving in-depth audits of thousands of returns. Computer programs assign each tax return a score that evaluates the potential for inaccuracies, based on the IRS's experience with similar returns. IRS staffers then pore through those returns with the highest scores to see which would make the best targets.
Many returns are picked because of "mismatches" -- which means that something a taxpayer reported doesn't match what was reported separately to the IRS by employers, banks or other financial institutions. Thus, one way to reduce your chances of hearing from the IRS is to double-check your return to see if what you reported matches what appears on those forms.
Other returns get audited because they were done by a paid tax preparer whom the IRS suspects of wrongdoing. Still others are picked based on information the IRS has obtained through its growing efforts to identify promoters and participants of tax shelters and other abusive tax-avoidance transactions.
Some returns get selected because of a tip from confidential informants, such as former business partners, ex-spouses or an angry neighbor. Separately, thousands of audit victims are picked at random among various income groups.
Most IRS probes are conducted by mail and are known as "correspondence" audits. These focus on a limited number of specific issues on a return and are designed to address those topics that don't require a full-scale, face-to-face audit. More complex issues are handled through what are known as "field" audits and are conducted in person. These may involve a trip to an IRS office or to the taxpayer's home or business.
In fiscal 2007, just over one million of the 1,384,563 individual income-tax audits were correspondence audits. Of the 31,382 audits of people with income of $1 million and higher, 19,123 were correspondence audits and 12,259 were field audits.
One of the easiest ways to attract IRS attention in a hurry is to claim there's no law that you have to pay federal income taxes or even file a return. IRS officials refer to these and similar excuses as "frivolous" arguments. Don't even think about trying to make such claims. Courts consistently reject them, and the penalty can be severe.

Success is having people love you that you want to have love you. - Buffett

It takes 20 years to build a repuatation and 5 minutes to ruin it. think about that and you'll do things differently.

What I'll do is form a partnership where I'll manage the portfolio and have my money in there with you. I'll guarantee you a 5% return, and I;ll get 20% of all profits after that. And i won't tell you what I own because that's distracting. All I want to do is hand in a scorecard when I come off the golf course.

There simply aren't enough saints available to staff a large institution that requires its members to voluntarily act against their own well-being.

The market is there only as a reference point to see if anybody is offering to do anything foolish. Charlie and I never have an opinion on the market because it might interfere with the opinions we have that are good.

Couldn't agree more!

"One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community." -- Albert Einstein

On Walter schloss

Walter Schloss article in Forbes

At 91, the man Warren Buffett famously dubbed a "superinvestor" is still picking unloved stocks.
Walter Schloss has lived through 17 recessions, starting with one when Woodrow Wilson was President. This old-school value investor has made money through many of them. What's ahead for the economy? He doesn't worry about it.
A onetime employee of the grand panjandrum of value, Benjamin Graham, and a man his pal Warren Buffett calls a "superinvestor," Schloss at 91 would rather talk about individual bargains he has spotted. Bushy-eyebrowed and avuncular, Schloss has a laid-back approach that fast-money traders couldn't comprehend. He has never owned a computer and gets his prices from the morning newspaper. A lot of his financial data come from company reports delivered to him by mail, or from hand-me-down copies of Value Line, the stock information service.
He loves the game. Although he stopped running others' money in 2003--by his account, he averaged a 16% total return after fees during five decades as a stand-alone investment manager, versus 10% for the S&P 500--Schloss today oversees his own multimillion-dollar portfolio with the zeal of a guy a third his age. In a day of computer models that purport to quantify that hideous and mysterious force called risk, listening to Schloss talk of his simple, homespun investing methods is a tonic.
During his time as a solo manager after leaving Graham's shop, he was a de facto hedge fund. He charged no management fee but took 25% of profits. He ran his business with no research assistants, not even a secretary. He and his son, Edwin (who joined him in 1973), worked in a single room, poring over Value Line charts and tables.
In a famous 1984 speech titled the "The Superinvestor of Graham-and-Doddsville," Buffett said Schloss was a flesh-and-blood refutation of the Efficient Market Theory. Asked whether he considers himself a superinvestor, Schloss demurs: "Well, I don't like to lose money."
He has a Depression-era thriftiness that benefited clients well. His wife, Anna, jokes that he trails her around their home turning off lights to save money. Those beloved Value Line sheets are from his son, 58, who has a subscription. "Why should I pay?" Schloss says.
Featured in Adam Smith's classic book Supermoney (1972), Schloss amazed the author by touting "cigar butt" stocks like Jeddo Highland Coal and New York Trap Rock. Schloss, as quoted by Smith, was the soul of self-effacement, saying, "I'm not very bright." He didn't go to college and started out as a Wall Street runner in the 1930s. Today he sits in his Manhattan apartment minding his own capital and enjoying simple pleasures. "Look at that hawk!" he erupts at the sight of one winging over Central Park.
One company he's keen on now shows the Schloss method. That's the wheelmaker. Superior Industries International (nyse: SUP - news - people ) gets three-quarters of sales from ailing General Motors (nyse: GM - news - people ) and Ford. Earnings have been falling for five years. Schloss picks up a Value Line booklet from his living room table and runs his index finger across a line of numbers, spitting out the ones he likes: stock trading at 80% of book value, a 3% dividend yield, no debt. "Most people say, 'What is it going to earn next year?' I focus on assets. If you don't have a lot of debt, it's worth something."

Schloss screens for companies ideally trading at discounts to book value, with no or low debt, and managements that own enough company stock to make them want to do the right thing by shareholders. If he likes what he sees, he buys a little and calls the company for financial statements and proxies. He reads these documents, paying special attention to footnotes. One question he tries to answer from the numbers: Is management honest (meaning not overly greedy)? That matters to him more than smarts. The folks running Hollinger International (other-otc: HLGAF.PK - news - people ) were smart but greedy--not good for investors.
Schloss doesn't profess to understand a company's operations intimately and almost never talks to management. He doesn't think much about timing--am I buying at the low? selling at the high?--or momentum. He doesn't think about the economy. Typical work hours when he was running his fund: 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., only a half hour after the New York Stock Exchange's closing bell.
Schloss owns a prized 1934 edition of Graham's Security Analysis he still thumbs through. Its binding is held together by three strips of Scotch tape. In the small room he invests from now, across the hall from his apartment, one wall contains a half-dozen gag pictures of Buffett.

Schloss first met that more famous value hunter at the annual meeting of wholesaler Marshall Wells. The future billionaire was drawn there for the reason Schloss had come: The stock was trading at a discount to net working capital (cash, inventory and receivables minus current liabilities). That number was a favorite measure of value at Graham-Newman, the investment firm Schloss joined after serving in World War II. Buffett came to the firm after the Marshall Wells meeting, sharing an office with Schloss at New York City's Chanin Building on East 42nd Street.
Schloss left the Graham firm in 1955 and with $100,000 from 19 investors began buying "working capital stocks" on his own, like mattressmaker Burton-Dixie and liquor wholesaler Schenley Industries. Success drew in investors, eventually rising to 92. But Schloss never marketed his fund or opened a second one, and he kept money he had to invest to a manageable size by handing his investors all realized gains at year-end, unless they told him to reinvest.
In 1960 the S&P was up half a percentage point, with dividends. Schloss returned 7% after fees. One winner: Fownes Brothers & Co., a glovemaker picked up for $2, nicely below working capital per share, and sold at $15. In the 1980s and 1990s he also saw big winners. By then, since inventory and receivables had become less important, he had shifted to stocks trading at below book value. But the tempo of trading had picked up. He often found himself buying while stocks still had a long way to fall and selling too early. He bought Lehman Brothers (nyse: LEH - news - people ) below book shortly after it went public in 1994 and made 75% on it in a few months. Then Lehman went on to triple in price.
Still, many of his calls were spot-on. He shorted Yahoo (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) and Amazon before the markets tanked in 2000, and cleaned up. After that, unable to find many cheap stocks, he and Edwin liquidated, handing back investors $130 million. The Schlosses went out with flair: up 28% and 12% in 2000 and 2001 versus the S&P's --9% and --12%.
The S&P now is off 15% from its peak, yet Schloss says he still doesn't see many bargains. He's 30% in cash. A recession, if it comes, may not change much. "There're too many people with money running around who have read Graham," he says.
Nevertheless, he has found a smattering of cheap stocks he thinks are likely to rise at some point. High on his watch list (see table) is CNA Financial, trading at 10% less than book; its shares have fallen 18% in a year. The insurer has little debt, and 89% of the voting stock is owned by Loews Corp. (nyse: LTR - news - people ), controlled by the billionaire Tisch family. He says buy if it gets cheaper. "I can't say people will get rich on it, but I would rather be safe than sorry," he says. "If it falls more, I won't worry about it. Let the Tisches worry about it."
Schloss flips through Value Line again and stops at page 885: Bassett Furniture, battered by a lousy housing market. The chair- and tablemaker is trading at a 40% discount to book and sports an 80-cent dividend, a fat 7% yield. Schloss mutters something about how book value hasn't risen for years and how the dividend may be under threat.
His call: Consider buying when the company cuts its dividend. Then Bassett will be even cheaper and it eventually will recover.
If only he had waited a bit to buy wheelmaker Superior, too. It's been two years since he bought in, and the stock is down a third. But the superinvestor, who has seen countless such drops, is philosophical and confident this one is worth book at least. "How much can you lose?" he asks.

AMR getting slaughtered again, not sure what I was thinking when added to it. Looks like dead money for a very long time :( Just when I need the cash for a house. Jumbos are charging very high rates, doesn't bode well for housing at all. The best time to be cash rich and buy down, and I don't hav cash :(

Gary Moore, John Templeton. Look up a book later.

Templeton says buy at the point of maximum pessimism. Problem is how to know that it is the maximum pessimism ? Thought it was maximum pessimism at 19, 16, 15 for AMR. Then ran out of cash ;)

OMG, just have lost nearly two third of gains made. Blood letting continues on AMR. Is it options manipulation? Or something more severe?

Yes there's earnings concern with oil high, but they seem to have 21B in cash which seems enough to drag it through in the near term at least and not straight into bankruptcy.. Spin off will reduce debt more. Could have good value going ahead. Really tempted to buy more but don't want to increase margin position.

Oh well, atleast will end active investment by self. Debating on whether to buy KBH home.. tempting..

I was cheered to note that AMR held up better than the rest of the market today. Market darlings AAPL, CMG, MA, RIMM etc fell quite a bit.. Is the market finally getting a bit rational or will they just resume their relentless march higher ?

Ended 2007 with a 38.9% gain. Quite a comedown from earlier return because of AMR.
Better than s&p and dow anyway, also higher than last year.

So far am doing investment based on psychological factors, need to do more on financials than just psychology!

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Was out of VSE at a 34% profit last week, annualized about 60%. Ok.

AMR is suffering big time. All my fortunes are tied to it now. Doesn't look too good. It may go down to $11-12 and then won't be able to look at my brokerage account any more. Not that its easy now.. Selling seems overdone, but given huge debt and high oil prices, the market seems to be right in marking it down so much. May take a couple of years and some luck. Also, maybe coming consolidation in airlines and its spinoff of Eagle may be good for AMR. Suspect though that there may be year end tax selling that's also at play. The 30 day wash rule should make this one rebound a bit in February. Some of the favorite homes on Zillow seemed to have dropped in value recently, kind of heartening.

Had a great time in Maui. Also donated to Smile train today.

From Investment Gurus by Peter Tanous:

Peter Lynch : The problem with technical analysis is that somebody could love the stock at 10 and hate it at 6. But I have traditionally liked one formation. The stock goes from 50 to 8, then is goes sideways for a few years between 8 and 11. Now if something goes right with this company, the stock is going north. These make a nice research list. You look at stocks that have bottomed out. Its like trying to catch a falling knife, you want the knife to stick in the wood. When it stops vibrating, you can pick it up.

Laura Sloate : In 1973, I couldn't find any stocks that were cheap enough. Management was on my case since I wasn't generating any commissions. At that point, I realized that if you worked for a big company, you would be controlled by the management.

If the average return on invested capital is less than the cost of the capital, you know its a poorly managed company. If we look at our stocks through 91-94, 12 of the 15 stocks that we sold because of a sell discipline of selling at 15% decline, 12 of these were higher six months later when we originally bought them, and a couple were real winners. So, we modified our sell discipline, we don't let it go down and not do anything. Its an evolution of process based on examination of results. Statistically we found that in 80% of the cases, if we had kept the stocks we sold six more months, we would have made money. Most of the bad stuff is in the price; we sometimes bought prematurely.

From Friends, Lovers, Chocolate by Alexander McCall Smith:

A good work, once drawn attention to by its author inevitably becomes an exercise in self-congratulation.

It always surprised her that her niece seemed uninterested in what people did. For Isabel, it was fundamentally important information if one were even to begin to understand somebody.

A Scotswoman would expect equality and consideration in marriage unlike an Italian woman.

The sentiment sounded trite as most good sentiments did. It was hard to make goodness and good people sound interesting. Yet the good are worthy of note, because they battled and that battle was a great story.

The Germans deserved great credit for their moral seriousness, which is why Isabel liked them so much. Anyone was capable of doing what they did in their historical moment of madness - and their goodness lay in the fact that they later faced up to what they had done.

Everybody's job is like that, I wash things and then they become dirty again. Even the Queen's job is like that. The Queen signs one law and then they pass another. She opens one bridge and then they build another.

What is patriotism but the love of the good things that one saw and ate in childhood?

"Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain cool and unruffled under all circumstances." -- Thomas Jefferson