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

I'm necessarily parasitic in a way. I have done well as a parasite. But I'm still a parasite.

I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don't work. People don't rise from nothing....It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't.

We sometimes think of being good at mathematics as an innate ability. You either have "it" or you don't. But to Schoenfeld, it's not so much ability as attitude. You master mathematics if you are willing to try.

Consistency is the most overrated of all human virtues... I'm someone who changes his mind all the time.

Achievement is talent plus preparation. The problem with this view is that the closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play.

There is more going on beneath the surface than we think, and more going on in little, finite moments of time than we would guess.