What a gifted child is, in many ways, is a gifted learner. And what a gifted adult is, is a gifted doer. And those are quite separate domains of achievement.

[Norden] said, with the Mark 15 Norden bombsight, he could drop a bomb into a pickle barrel at 20,000 feet.

Sometimes the most modest changes can bring about enormous effects.

When writing, you can't break physical rules. You can't have people come back from the dead. That's cheating. I am a kind of narrative fundamentalist in many ways.

Innovators have to be open. They have to be able to imagine things that others cannot and be willing to challenge their own preconceptions. They also need to be conscientious. An innovator who has brilliant ideas but lacks the discipline and persistence to carry them out is merely a dreamer ... But crucially, innovators need to be disagreeable ... They are people willing to take social risks-to do things that others might disapprove of.

There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible. All you have to do is find it.

A radical and transformative thought goes nowhere without the willingness to challenge convention.