Never ask anyone for their opinion, forecast, or recommendation. Just ask them what they have—or don’t have—in their portfolio.

What I learned on my own I still remember

Work hard, not in grunt work, but in chasing such opportunities and maximizing exposure to them. This makes living in big cities invaluable because you increase the odds of serendipitous encounters-you gain exposure to the envelope of serendipity.

You get pseudo-order when you seek order; you only get a measure of order and control when you embrace randomness.

Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost.

Umberto Eco is the owner of a large personal library of almost 30,000 books that he has not read. [To him] read books are far less valuable than unread ones.

Fragility is the quality of things that are vulnerable to volatility.