See's candy company was the first high-quality business we ever bought.

You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and do sensible things. Most people don’t grab the right ideas or don’t know what to do with them.

To some extent, stocks are like Rembrandts. They sell based on what they've sold in the past. Bonds are much more rational. No-one thinks a bond's value will soar to the moon.

So you can get very remarkable investment results if you think more like a winning pari-mutuel player. Just think of it as a heavy odds against game full of craziness with an occasional mispriced something or other. And you're probably not going to be smart enough to find thousands in a lifetime. And when you get a few, you really load up. It's just that simple.

I think that one should recognize reality even when one doesn't like it; indeed, especially when one doesn't like it.

If the value of a company doesn't just scream out at you, it's too close.

We regard using [a stock's] volatility as a measure of risk is nuts. Risk to us is 1) the risk of permanent loss of capital, or 2) the risk of inadequate return. Some great businesses have very volatile returns - for example, See's [a candy company owned by Berkshire] usually loses money in two quarters of each year - and some terrible businesses can have steady results.