The lesson here is very simple. But it is striking how often it is overlooked. We are so caught in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth. We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that thirteen-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur. But that's the wrong lesson. Our world only allowed one thirteen-year-old unlimited access to a time sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today?

What interests me about fiction is plot. And what interests me about plot is whether someone tells a story that moves me within the constraints of storytelling. And I have narrowly defined storytelling.

The people at the top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.

Sometimes [genius] is just the thing that emerges after twenty years of working at your kitchen table.

That was it! The whole Redwood City philosophy was based on a willingness to try harder than anyone else.

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!

People are experience-rich and theory-poor.