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.

If you don't contradict yourself on a regular basis, then you're not thinking.

No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.

It changes how people read you if you believe in God. It gives insight into your motivation, how you look at problems and how you deal with people.

The act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty.

We have the kind of self-made-man myth, which says that super-successful people did it themselves.

Jenny Simpson loses her shoe in the women's fifteen hundred, with a lap and a half to go, destroying her chances to repeat as world champion, and she gives the most gracious interview afterward about how she's had a wonderful career already. Great for Jenny Simpson. Bad for the sport! We need drama!