when a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influences and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. it seems to me that if you or i must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
we have only one story. all novels, all poetry, are built on the never ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. and it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.

— John Steinbeck in East of Eden