An investor needs to do very few things right as long as he or she avoids big mistakes.

In the search [of a deal], we adopt the same attitude one might find appropriate in looking for a spouse: It pays to be active, interested, and open-minded, but it does not pay to be in a hurry.

I have this complicated procedure I go through every morning, which is to look in the mirror and decide what I'm going to do. And I feel at that point, everybody's had their say.

You need a lot of curiosity for a long, long time.

Too often, executive compensation in the U.S. is ridiculously out of line with performance. That won't change, moreover, because the deck is stacked against investors when it comes to the CEO's pay. The upshot is that a mediocre-or-worse CEO - aided by his handpicked VP of human relations and a consultant from the ever-accommodating firm of Ratchet, Ratchet and Bingo - all too often receives gobs of money from an ill-designed compensation arrangement.

Fund consultants like to require style boxes such as "long-short," "macro," "international equities." At Berkshire our only style box is "smart."

I do know that when I am 60, I should be attempting to achieve different personal goals than those which had priority at age 20.