If you do smart things and use leverage and do one wrong thing along the way, it could wipe you out, because anything times zero is zero. But it's reinforcing when the people around you are doing it successfully, you're doing it successfully, and it's a lot like Cinderella at the ball.

It's good to learn from your mistakes. It's better to learn from other people's mistakes.

Intensity is the price of excellence.

We like to buy businesses, but we don't like to sell them.

It's the deleveraging that's going on right now that has caused the credit crisis.

If knowing history made you rich, librarians would be billionaires.

Managers thinking about accounting issues should never forget one of Abraham Lincoln's favorite riddles: How many legs does a dog have, if you call a tail a leg? The answer: Four, because calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.