Three ingredients of luxury lifestyle design are time, income, and mobility.

It's lonely at the top. Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for "realistic" goals, paradoxically making them the most time-consuming and energy consuming. It is easier to raise $10,000,000 than it is $1,000,000. It is easier to pick up the one perfect 10 in the bar than the five 8s.

To make a bestseller, there are more customers than just your customers: Selling to the end-user is just one piece of the puzzle. In my case, I needed to first sell myself to the publisher to get marketing support and national retail distribution.

Being selective-doing less-is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.

For all their bitching about what’s holding them back, most people have a lot of trouble coming up with the defined dreams they’re being held from.

Having a size 9 foot is fantastic because almost all of the shoe companies do their prototyping in size 9, so if you visit a place like Nike headquarters, you can try every sort of wacky, out-there model.

The commonsense rules of the "real world" are a fragile collection of socially reinforced illusions.