I just wanted to be a businessman, and to me, the best way to understand business was to be an accountant.

I do think a key to success in any walk of life is having a short memory and a thick skin - I know it has served me well over the years.

American business would be run better today if there was more alignment between CEOs' interest and the company. For example, would the financial crisis of 2008 have occurred if the CEO of Lehman and Morgan Stanley and Goldman and Citibank had to take a very small percentage of every mortgage-backed security... or every loan they made?

I just wanted to be a businessman, and to me, the best way to understand business was to be an accountant.

I can assure you that buying leases for x and selling them for 5x or 10x is a lot more profitable than trying to produce gas at $5 or $6 per million cubic feet.

Every day you use dozens of products that have strong chemicals in them, but remember, the only difference between poison and medicine is dosage.

I've always been comfortable thinking things through and doing it, more or less, my way. You can be as creative as you want, but if you're... unwilling to work on the details, to see those put into action, then creativity is just dreams, or worse, hallucinations.