A study at the University of Utah found that if you ask someone why he is friendly with someone else, heโll say it is because he and his friend share similar attitudes. But if you actually quiz the two of them on their attitudes, youโll find out that what they actually share is similar activities. Weโre friends with the people we do things with, as much as we are with the people we resemble. We donโt seek out friends, in other words. We associate with the people who occupy the same small, physical spaces that we do.
Malcolm GladwellPeople who are busy doing things - as opposed to people who are busy sitting around, like me, reading and having coffee in coffee shops -don't have opportunities to kind of collect and organize their experiences and make sense of them.
Malcolm GladwellI 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.
Malcolm Gladwell