My father read Charles Dickens to us as children, and at the end of virtually every novel he would choke up and start to cry - and my father NEVER cried. It always made me love him all the more.

Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.

The difference between a crime of evil and a crime of illness is the difference between a sin and a symptom.

Activism that challenges the status quo, that attacks deeply rooted problems, is not for the faint of heart.

Science fiction annoyed me because it was like, "Why is the world as it is not enough for you?"

I became convinced that knowing lots of people was kind of skill, something that the diligent can overcome.

Economists often talk about the 80/20 Principle, which is the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the “work” will be done by 20 percent of the participants. In most societies, 20 percent of criminals commit 80 percent of crimes. Twenty percent of motorists cause 80 percent of all accidents. Twenty percent of beer drinkers drink 80 percent of all beer. When it comes to epidemics, though, this disproportionality becomes even more extreme: a tiny percentage of people do the majority of the work.