The creative act always requires a stepping back. It's called the incubation period. The incubation period - one of the four phases of creativity - is when you're not consciously thinking of a problem, and you're letting it marinate. So this is why you hear time and again, people saying they had that "Eureka" moment in the bath, like Archimedes, or in the shower, or while going for a walk or in a coffeehouse.

Our happiness is completely and utterly intertwined with other people: family and friends and neighbors and the woman you hardly notice who cleans your office. Happiness is not a noun or verb. It's a conjunction. Connective tissue.

The coffeehouse is good for genius, and the Viennese coffeehouse is a classic case. Freud had his favorite coffee shop, and so did Gustav Klimt.

Perhaps it's true you can't go back in time, but you can return to the scene of a love, of a crime, of happiness, and of a fateful decision; the places are what remain, are what you can possess, are what is immortal.

Where we are is vital to who we are.

Compromise is a skill, and like all skills it atrophies from lack of use.

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