The moment people feel they know what to expect from you, your spell on them is broken.

The truth is that creative activity is one that involves the entire self - our emotions, our levels of energy, our characters, and our minds.

Expand your notion of what adversity is.

Playing with appearances and mastering the arts of deception are among the aesthetic pleasures of life. They are also key components in the acquisition of power.

Ethics and power are separate. Ethics and morality. I think life would be miserable if there weren't some kind of code that people operated by, but history is full of many, many people who have gotten power by very unethical means, and people who were very ethical, who get no power, people who have the most brilliant, lovely, wonderful, nice intentions and bring about horrible things in the world because they don't know how to play the power game.

Hasty climbers have sudden falls.

We happen to live in an era that is incredibly wrapped up in notions of political correctness; everything is seen through the lens of politics. But being political and politically correct is just another way of fighting, another form of power and strategy, an insidious means of manipulation.