A fan is always an outsider. Most sportswriters are not, by this definition, fans. They capitalize on access to athletes. They spoke to Kobe last night, and Kobe says his finger is going to be fine. They spent three days fly-fishing with Brett Favre in March, and Brett says he's definitely coming back for another season.

I know it sounds hard to believe, but habits laid down by our ancestors persist even after the conditions that created those habits have gone away.

The trick to finding ideas is to convince yourself that everyone and everything has a story.

[Research] suggests that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act – and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment – are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize.

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.

I don't like things that aren't true.

As human beings, we always expect everyday change to happen slowly and steadily, and for there to be some relationship between cause and effect.