The ability to work hard and make sacrifices comes naturally to those who know exactly what they want.

Continuing to believe the same thing, even in the face of new evidence to the contrary, is the definition of insanity - except in politics where it's called leadership.

Decisions are made by people who have time, not people who have talent.

If you work in the city long enough, it begins to deal with you on a personal level. Streets reveal their moods. Sometimes the signal light loves you. Sometimes they fight you. When you're hunting for a new building, you hope the city is on your side. You have to use a little bit of thinking--you might call it the process of elimination--and you need a little bit of instinct, but not too much of either. If you think too hard, you overshoot your target and end up at the Pier or the Tenderloin. If you relax and let the city help, the destination does all the work for you.

What does it mean to be yourself?” he asked. “If it means to do what you think you ought to do, then you’re doing that already. If it means to act like you’re exempt from society’s influence, that’s the worst advice in the world; you would probably stop bathing and wearing clothes. The advice to ‘be yourself’ is obviously nonsense. But our brains accept this tripe as wisdom because it is more comfortable to believe we have a strategy for life than to believe we have no idea how to behave.

Beware of those who try to sell you simple answers to complex questions.

There’s nothing more humbling than seeing your best quotes in a list, and thinking they could have been written by a coma patient with a keyboard and spasms.