Our job is to make change. Our job is to connect to people, to interact with them in a way that leaves them better than we found them, more able to get where they'd like to go. Every time we waste that opportunity, every page or sentence that doesn't do enough to advance the cause is waste.

The way I understand gifts is that the giver must make a sacrifice, create an uneven exchange, bring himself closer to the recipient, create change and do it all with the right spirit.

There are always limits, and opportunities. The ones we rehearse and focus on are the ones that shape our future.

We live in a vague world. And it gets vaguer all the time. In this environment, the power of the specific, measurable and useful promise made and kept is difficult to overstate.

Art isn't only a painting; it's anything that changes someone for the better, any nonanonymous interaction that leads to a human (not simply a commercial) conclusion.

The definition of a revolution: it destroys the perfect and enables the impossible.

My new favorite word is 'awkward.'...Th e reason we need to be in search of awkward is that awkward is the barrier between us and excellence, between where we are and the remarkable. If it were easy, everyone would have done it already, and it wouldn't be worth the effort.