It's such a pain in the ass to write a book, I can't imagine writing one if I'm not interested in the subject.

My client loved risk. Risk, I had learned, was a commodity in itself. Risk could be canned and sold like tomatoes.

The incentive for the outsider is to attack the system right up to the moment he is co-opted by it. The incentive for the insider -and this took some getting used to- is to allow yourself to be attacked, and then co-opt your most ferocious attackers, and their best ideas. The effect on the system as a whole is to make it more stable, because everyone winds up working on its behalf.

People in both fields operate with beliefs and biases. To the extent you can eliminate both and replace them with data, you gain a clear advantage.

We aren't natural statisticians. What we are is natural storytelling machines. And so what we do after we have the facts in hand is build a story to explain the facts.

I didn't think one day something would happen that would bring me back to Wall Street to write what is essentially a sequel.

Why pay $20 million to Harrison Ford? I dont even understand that. They think they have to do it... If someone puts a price on himself, that suggests he is irreplaceable, then he better find somewhere else to work.