If you think advantage lies in resources, then you think the best educational system is the one that spends the most money.

It's as if you were interested in fashion and your neighbor when you were growing up happened to be Giorgio Armani.

The values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are.

Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push - in just the right place - it can be tipped.

The act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty.

Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.

I always resist seeing my own personal motivation in my work, but I guess it must be there on some level. And I do feel very much that my life follows the kinds of things I talk about in my books. I've always thought of myself as an insanely lucky person, so perhaps the success of my first two books led me to want to examine this phenomenon on some unconscious level.