I was really interested in a pretty simple thing: what happens when someone tries to introduce moral considerations into Wall Street, what happens when someone wants to actually demand of himself and those who work with him that what they do is not just profitable but good and useful.

There's something bad in everything good and something good in everything bad.

Some coaches believed they could judge a player's performance simply by watching it. In this they were deeply mistaken. The naked eye was an inadequate tool for learning what you needed to know to evaluate baseball players and baseball games. Think about it. One absolutely cannot tell, by watching, the difference between a .300 hitter and a .275 hitter. The difference is one hit every two weeks. The difference between a good hitter and an average hitter is simply not visible-it is a matter of record

The Irish turned in on themselves and bid up their own land prices in the most extraordinary ways... The Irish people stepped in and guaranteed the banks, and committed to repay sums they can't afford to repay, and essentially committed themselves to generations of suffering.

Donald Trump got almost 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton! He happened to get more in some of the right places. It was just like one of those things where a stock going up and people impose a false sense of order on it. It's really more intellectually honestly viewed as a disorderly process.

Commitment, by its nature, frees us from ourselves and, while it stands us in opposition to some, it joins us with others similarly committed. Commitment moves us from the mirror trap of the self absorbed with the self to the freedom of a community of shared values.

You want the book to be special, and they are not always going to be special, but at least you want that to be the ambition. So the only way that happens is if you are not pressing to write a book.