Nothing frustrates me more than someone who reads something of mine or anyone else's and says, angrily, 'I don't buy it.' Why are they angry? Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head—even if in the end you conclude that someone else's head is not a place you'd really like to be.

For every romantic possiblity, no matter how robust, there exists at least one equal and opposite sentence, phrase, or word capable of extinguishing it.

What is learned out of hard work and trial is inevitably more powerful than what is learned easily.

Humans socialize in the largest groups of all primates because we are the only animals with brains large enough to handle the complexities of that social arrangement.

It wasn't an excuse. It was a fact. He'd had to make his way alone, and no one - not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses - ever makes it alone.

I've always been baffled by how much we over-rate the statistically insignificant differences that separate competitors at the top end of the distribution.

Lesson Number One: The Importance of Being Jewish