An innate gift and a certain amount of intelligence are important, but what really pays is ordinary experience.

That was it! The whole Redwood City philosophy was based on a willingness to try harder than anyone else.

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

David Epstein, the author of the best book on athletics in recent memory - "The Sports Gene" - wrote to me to say that he thinks I'm being overly generous. He points out that, for years, there used to be an "all-star challenge" on television, in which the best professional athletes from a variety of sports competed in a kind of makeshift decathlon.

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

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.

An innate gift and a certain amount of intelligence are important, but what really pays is ordinary experience.