Books allow us to escape from the pressures of modern life. By far, the best vehicles of escape are Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy genre allowing us to lose ourselves in worlds far away from the reality we know. This escapism works because we totally immerse ourselves and:-We become the hero or heroine. We are the ones who thwart evil. We laugh as we socialise with characters we have never met but feel they are as close as our family. We cry when we lose a good friend.

And one day when you wake up, you happen to realise that your battle isn__ with the man you had got into a brawl with the other day, it isn__ with a friend turned foe, it isn__ with those parents who chose to give up on you, it isn__ with the bus driver for not having waited until you got in, it isn__ with the employer who cancelled the application to your leave, it isn__ with the examiner who resolved into failing you, it isn__ with the woman who did not reciprocate your feelings, it isn__ with child who dropped his ice-cream cone on you, it isn__ with your ill fate and it isn__ with that superior being above you. Your battle, your fight isn__ against the world but against yourself and the only way to come through all of it and beyond, to win, is improvement, self-improvement which needs to be gradual and progressive with the transverse of each day.

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

He would know a number of grown women in his life who did not possess even a small portion of the grace his middle sister owned at the age of fourteen.

A basic reality of life is that we all struggle. We hurt and have hurt other people. We all feel lost sometimes. This isn__ all we are, but it is a part of who we are. The only question I have when I__ with someone is, __an they admit it? And will they let me admit it too?

Is there for honest Poverty That hings his head, an' a' that; The coward slave-we pass him by, We dare be poor for a' that! For a' that, an' a' that. Our toils obscure an' a' that, The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The Man's the gowd for a' that. What though on hamely fare we dine, Wear hoddin grey, an' a that; Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine; A Man's a Man for a' that: For a' that, and a' that, Their tinsel show, an' a' that; The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor, Is king o' men for a' that. Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that; Tho' hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof for a' that: For a' that, an' a' that, His ribband, star, an' a' that: The man o' independent mind He looks an' laughs at a' that. A prince can mak a belted knight, A marquis, duke, an' a' that; But an honest man's abon his might, Gude faith, he maunna fa' that! For a' that, an' a' that, Their dignities an' a' that; The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth, Are higher rank than a' that. Then let us pray that come it may, (As come it will for a' that,) That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth, Shall bear the gree, an' a' that. For a' that, an' a' that, It's coming yet for a' that, That Man to Man, the world o'er, Shall brothers be for a' that.