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

When I see someone who reads something of mine and draws something out of it that's very different from my perspective, I think that's actually cool. Sometimes it's worrisome when you feel they badly misinterpret it, but it just says that they're thinking, and they're bringing their own interpretation to bear on it. [...] That's part of the wonderful thing about putting words into the world, and if I was worried about that, I couldn't be a writer.

Happiness, in one sense, is a function of how closely our world conforms to the infinite variety of human preference.

It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success.

Lesson Number One: The Importance of Being Jewish

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.

Achievement is talent plus preparation