Courage is what you earn when you've been through the tough times and you discover they aren't so tough after all.

Basketball is an intricate, high-speed game filled with split-second, spontaneous decisions. But that spontaneity is possible only when everyone first engages in hours of highly repetitive and structured practice--perfecting their shooting, dribbling, and passing and running plays over and over again--and agrees to play a carefully defined role on the court. This is the critical lesson of improve, too, and it is also a key to understanding a puzzle of Millennium Challenge: spontaneity isn't random.

What we do as a community, as a society, for each other, matters as much as what we do for ourselves. It sounds a little trite, but there's a powerful amount of truth in that, I think.

The successful are those who have been given opportunities.

The single most important thing a city can do is provide a community where interesting, smart people want to live with their families.

Success is deeply rooted in time and place. You may have the drive to read tons of books on biology. But if there are no books on biology in your library, and the library is never open, your drive is meaningless.

Science fiction annoyed me because it was like, "Why is the world as it is not enough for you?"