Goodness:

"If you want it.... you got to make it out of badness. Badness.... And you know why? Because there isn’t anything else to make it out of."

"If, as you say, there is only the bad to start with, and the good must be made from the bad, then how do you ever know what the good is? How do you ever recognize the good? Assuming you have made it from the bad. Answer me that.”

"You just make it up as you go along."

   -Robert Penn Warren, All The King's Men