When you're an underdog, you're forced to try things you would never otherwise have attempted.

The particular skill that allows you to talk your way out of a murder rap, or convince your professor to move you from the morning to the afternoon section, is what the psychologist Robert Sternberg calls "practical intelligence." To Sternberg, practical intelligence includes things like "knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for for maximum effect.

The face is not a secondary billboard for our internal feelings. It is an equal partner in the emotional process.

When people in authority want the rest of us to behave, it matters-first and foremost-how they behave.

Performance ought to improve with experience, and pressure is an obstacle that the diligent can overcome.

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.

In a country that never wins anything: in Canada, if one of our athletes so much as makes the final in a World Championship, we declare a national holiday.