"Mitt Romney is a rich man, but is Mitt Romney's character formed by his wealth? Is Romney a spoiled, cosseted character? Has he been corrupted by ease and luxury?
"The notion is preposterous. All his life, Romney has been a worker and a grinder. He earned two degrees at Harvard simultaneously (in law and business). He built a business. He's persevered year after year, amid defeat after defeat, to build a political career.
"Romney's salient quality is not wealth. It is, for better and worse, his tenacious drive--the sort of relentlessness that we associate with striving immigrants, not rich scions."
"Mitt, meanwhile, had his own ideas about what he would--and wouldn't--do as a father, evidently counting on Ann's maternal generosity. 'I was willing to change the urine-soaked diapers, but the messier types gave me dry heaves,' he told GQ magazine in 2007. 'So my wife allowed me to escape that.'"
--Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, The Real Romney, p. 103.