We prematurely write off people as failures. We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail.

It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success.

The goal of storytelling should be to make stories as ubiquitous as music.

When writing, you can't break physical rules. You can't have people come back from the dead. That's cheating. I am a kind of narrative fundamentalist in many ways.

There will be statues of Bill Gates across the Third World. There's a reasonable shot that - because of his money - we will cure malaria.

I don't think people are averse to thinking about things in a deep way, but we have limited time and opportunity to think about things in a deep way. I think that's why there is an appetite for non-fiction - it gives people the opportunity to reexamine ordinary experience and be smarter about it.

Nobody accomplishes success by themselves.