I despise the cheap feel-goodism of inspirational cliches, especially when tied to any sport (baseball, anyone?), and I was pleased to learn that fiction writer Earl Stanley Gardner had to take a roundabout way to discover his calling.

Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.

And Jared lived after he begat Enoch eight hundred years, and begat sons and daughters:

Now you see just how the stamen gets its lusty dust onto the stigma / And why this frenzied chlorophyllous orgy starts in spring is no enigma!