It's as if you were interested in fashion and your neighbor when you were growing up happened to be Giorgio Armani.

No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.

Lands' End has undergone three major changes over the past couple of decades. The first was the introduction of an 800 number, in 1978; the second was express delivery, in 1994; and the third was the introduction of a Web site, in 1995. The first two innovations cut the average transaction time-the time between the moment of ordering and the moment the goods are received-from three weeks to four days. The third innovation has cut the transaction time from four days to, well, four days.

We cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we choose to write as a society don't matter at all.

A radical and transformative thought goes nowhere without the willingness to challenge convention.

Sometimes constraints actually create success. Not being able to swim made me run. And running taught me the discipline I needed as a writer.

The act of facing overwhelming odds produces greatness and beauty.