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From Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing by Po Bronson & Ashley Merriman

We need to make a distinction between adaptive competitiveness and maladaptive competitiveness. Adaptive competitiveness is chracterized by perseverance and determination to rise to the challenge, but it's bounded by an abiding respect for the rules. It's the ability to feel genuine satisfaction at having put in a worthy effort, even if you lose. People with adaptive competitiveness don't have to be the best at everything-they only strive to be the best in the domain they train for. They might be perfectionists at work, but they don't care if they're the worst at tennis and shuffleboard. They are able to defer gratification, meaning they accept that it can take a long time to improve. Healthy competitiveness is marked by constant striving for excellence, but not desperate concerns over rank. It's adaptive competitiveness that leads to the great, heroic performances that inspire us all. The maladaptive variety is what gives competitiveness a bad name. Maladaptiv...
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From No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

You think he was packin the money? I'd say there's a good chance of it. So we still aint found the last man, have we? Bell didn't answer. He rose and stood looking out over the country. It's a mess, aint it Sheriff? If it aint it'll do till a mess gets here. p. 77
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From The Hours by Michael Cunningham

He will not ask the name of the movie star; he actually does not care. Richard, alone among Clarissa's acquaintance, has no essential interest in famous people. Richard genuinely does not recognize such distinctions. It is, Clarissa thinks, some combination of monumental ego and a kind of savantism. Richard cannot imagine a life more interesting or worthwhile than those being lived by his acquaintances and himself, and for that reason one often feels exalted, expanded in his presence. He is not one of those egotists who miniaturize others. He is the opposite kind of egotist, driven by grandiosity rathen than greed, and if he insists on a version of you that is funnier, stranger, more eccentric and profound than you suspect yourself to be-capable of doing more good and more harm in the world than you've ever imagined-it is all but impossible not to believe, at least in his presence and for a while after you've left him, that he alone sees through to your essence, weighs your...
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