I'm a professor - there should be some lessons learned - and how you can use the stuff you hear today to enable your dreams or enable the dreams of others. And as you get older you may find that enabling-the-dreams-of-others thing is even more fun.

Never lose the child-like wonder. It’s just too important. It’s what drives us. Help others.

To-Do lists help us break life into small steps.

If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

I was hugely impressed... was the ultimate example of a man who knew what he didn't know, was perfectly willing to admit it, and didn't want to leave until he understood. That's heroic to me. I wish every grad student had that attitude.

The most difficult part of writing a book is not devising a plot which will captivate the reader. It's not developing characters the reader will have strong feelings for or against. It is not finding a setting which will take the reader to a place he or she as never been. It is not the research, whether in fiction or non-fiction. The most difficult task facing a writer is to find the voice in which to tell the story.

Call home at least once a week. It's a proven fact that we call home less the older we get. And that's wrong. It should be the other way around. As we get older, our parents get older.