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.

When people reflexively write checks to institutions that have billions of dollars in the bank, they are essentially committing a moral crime. Your money could do good in this world and you're choosing instead to waste it. People have to do a better job of that. You've got to find places where your money's going to do some good and direct your dollars towards that institution.

Incompetence is certainty in the absence of expertise. Overconfidence is certainty in the presence of expertise.

If you think success is about so many more things and is so much more arbitrary, then you can be much more open to the idea that you can be Ben Fountain and publish your great book at forty-nine.

Choking is about thinking too much. Panic is about thinking too little. Choking is about loss of instinct. Panic is reversion to instinct. They may look the same, but they are worlds apart.

The goal of storytelling should be to make stories as ubiquitous as music.

What does it say about a society that it devotes more care and patience to the selection of those who handle its money than of those who handle its children?