Success is not measured by bestseller lists. Certain types of great books sell very well; other types of great books don’t sell a lot. But they’re both great.

Failure is hard, but success is far more dangerous. If you're successful at the wrong thing, the mix of praise and money and opportunity can lock you in forever.

Testosterone is the hormone of collaboration and competition that, whenever we compete on a team, we collaborate with our teammates. And most of us in our daily life, to the extent that we have to compete with the rat race in the world out there, we're collaborating with other people at the same time. The two are hand in hand.

Curiosity is a raw and genuine sign from deep inside our tangled psyches, and we'd do well to follow the direction it points us in.

Interests evolve into hobbies or volunteer work, which grow into passions. It takes time, more time than anyone imagines.

Make sure your characters are worth spending ten hours with. That’s how long it takes to read a book. Reading a book is like being trapped in a room for ten hours with those characters. Think of your main characters as dinner guests. Would your friends want to spend ten hours with the characters you’ve created? Your characters can be loveable, or they can be evil, but they’d better be compelling. If not, your reader will be bored and leave.

There was a culture that came out of the self-esteem movement which was don't anybody keep track of the goals. The kids keep track, but nobody keep track of the goals because we don't want the kids to have the experience of losing. And in depriving them losing, thinking it scarred them to lose, we made losing so taboo, so unspeakable, that we instead made losing more scary to kids, not less scary.