All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there

[In picking stocks] You really have to know a lot about business. You have to know a lot about competitive advantage. You have to know a lot about the maintainability of competitive advantage. You have to have a mind that quantifies things in terms of value. And you have to be able to compare those values with other values available in the stock market.

Anyone with an engineering frame of mind will look at [accounting standards] and want to throw up.

If the same family were always on the bottom, then you'd have big resentments. But if DuPonts go down and Pampered Chef up, [that's good]. That much churn makes people think the system is fairer. Buffett: We don't like churn now, but we liked it more 30-40 years ago.

I've been associated with Warren ( Buffett) so long, I thought I'd be just a footnote.

We try more to profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric.

It's not a competency if you don't know the edge of it.