Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don't. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky - but all critical to making them who they are. The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.

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

Re-reading is much underrated. I've read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold once every five years since I was 15. I only started to understand it the third time.

An aggressive drug-testing program would cut down on certain abuses, but its never going to catch everyone - or even close to everyone.

It's just strange to think that so much of our enjoyment from sports comes from the elevation of arbitrary differences.

The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.

It's very hard to find someone who's successful and dislikes what they do.