I'm a purist: I start to wrinkle my nose when the Cold War ends.

People are in one of two states in a relationship,” Gottman went on. “The first is what I call positive sentiment override, where positive emotion overrides irritability. It’s like a buffer. Their spouse will do something bad, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, he’s just in a crummy mood.’ Or they can be in negative sentiment override, so that even a relatively neutral thing that a partner says gets perceived as negative.

Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action.

Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.

You don't start at the top if you want to find the story. You start in the middle, because it's the people in the middle who do the actual work in the world.

When you're an underdog, you're forced to try things you would never otherwise have attempted.

Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good.