Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information. the internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency.

My writing model is my mother, who is a writer as well. She always valued clarity and simplicity above all else. If someone doesn't understand what you're writing, then everything else you do is superfluous. Irrelevant. If any thoughtful, curious reader finds what I do impenetrable, I've failed.

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.

An aggressive drug-testing program would cut down on certain abuses, but its never going to catch everyone - or even close to everyone.

In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.

What does it say about a society that it devotes more care and patience to the selection of those who handle its money than of those who handle its children?

Affect, Imagery, Consciousness, a four-volume work so dense that its readers were evenly divided between those who understood it and thought it was brilliant and those who did not understand it and thought it was brilliant.