..there is more to life than just pleasure. We want to achieve our happiness and not just experience it.

People don't go to Starbucks for the coffee - of that I'm pretty sure - they go for the atmosphere, they go for the 70 decibels, they go for the Starbucks effect.

We are shaped not only by our current geography but by our ancestral one as well. Americans, for instance, retain a frontier spirit even though the only frontier that remains is that vast open space between the SUV and strip mall. We are our past.

Normally, we think of the religious as people who care more, not less than the rest of us. This is not true, not exactly. The truly religious care more deeply about fewer things and do't give a hoot about the rest.

Genius is not only a what or a who, it is a where. It is grounded in a place every single time.

I'm interested in genius the way a hungry man is interested in Philadelphia cheesesteaks. I want something. I want a piece of it.

Happiness is not a noun or a verb. It's a conjunction. Connective tissue.