“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.”

“Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to...”

“Failure means a stripping away of the inessential.”

“I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like Jane Austen.”

“The fame thing is interesting because I never wanted to be famous, and I never dreamt I would be famous.”

“Death is just life's next big adventure.”

“We are a unique ape. We have language. Other animals have systems of communication that fall far short of that. They don't have the same ability to communicate complicated conditionals and what-ifs...”

“The Internet has given us 10 or 15 new styles of communication: long messages like blogging, and then short messages like texting and tweeting. I see it all as part of an expanding array of linguis...”

“In parenting, as in judging, the days are long, but the years are short.”

“Indifference destroys vocation unlike any other intangible force, for the reason that it shakes the very core of our motivation for doing what we do.”

“Success is the result of actions. Stop wishing and start doing.”

“My life is music, and in some vague, mysterious and subconscious way, I have always been driven by a taut inner spring which has propelled me to almost compulsively reach for perfection in music, o...”

“You don't know me. You know one me, just like I know one you. And you can't know every me, and I can't know every you.”

“When I knew people, I knew me and when I knew me, I knew people.”

“Our spirit knows our purpose, let these en-grained impressions shape our perceptions of who we think we are today.”