Deferred Life Plan: Step one: Do what you have to do. Then, eventually — Step two: Do what you want to do

Startups are unique animals. We take them pretty much for granted out here now, but they are still endeavors that require very different skills from the ones needed in established companies.

Anyone can sail with the wind to his back. Startups usually sail into a stiff wind, leaking like a sieve, in high seas, without food or water.

In the world of startups, angels invest in seed or early-stage deals, and with their money they lend a bit of advice. They pay for the privilege of helping the company.

Good entrepreneurs are passionate visionaries, usually with one or more exceptional talents, but rarely have they actually built a company from scratch.

It's not clear that being the first-mover will provide the rash of Internet startups a sustainable competitive advantage. Ultimately being right, or better positioned, may be more important than being first.

Most business ideas do not find funding. Even the majority of those that are funded—that is, vetted by very smart people who think enough of the ideas to invest in them — ultimately fail.

It's the romance, not the finance that makes business worth pursuing.

Entrepreneurs, in my experience, don't like to be told they're wrong.

The business model can and should change over time, as the world changes.

Business conditions are forever changing. You need to reconsider your strategies and business models constantly and adjust them where necessary.

Business is about nothing if not people.

Silicon Valley veterans share a tacit understanding that what a startup needs isn't one CEO, but three —each at successive stages of the startup's development.

If you turn a visionary startup into an operating company too early, you throw out its birthright. It will never be as big, or as influential as it might otherwise be. It will be much harder, perhaps impossible, to expand the vision later, when performance is being measured, because then there's too much at stake.

Business failures are unfortunate but necessary steps in the search for those few huge successes.

If you're brilliant, 15 to 20 percent of the risk is removed. If you work twenty-four hours a day, another 15 to 20 percent of the risk is removed. The remaining 60 to 70 percent of business risk will be completely out of your control..

Work hard, work passionately, but apply your most precious asset — time — to what is most meaningful to you.

Time is the only resource that matters.

He's so ugly. When you walked by him, your pants wrinkle. He made fly balls curve foul.

I'm a preacher's kid, and we were always told, Act right all the time, because someone's always watching.

Burnout is natures way of telling you youve been going through the motions your soul has departed youre a zombie a member of the walking dead a sleepwalker. False optimism is like administrating stimulants to an exhausted nervous system.

Yeah, I've had the privilege to know a lot of really talented people.

I'm quite a tuxedo junkie, I collect them all year round.

I'm an escapist. I'm not a planner; I've never made a decision about anything in my life. The good thing about Africa is that you can escape forever. You can do what you want without someone looking over your shoulder.

On a bike, being just slightly above pedestrian and car eye level, one gets a perfect view of the goings-on in one's own town.

And it seems to me correct then, and I think it's correct now, that job one is get the planning done, make sure the buses are there. When that's done, it's completely appropriate to go around and tour around and look at the damage.

The cool thing about 'Transparent' is that the show is funny but not like a sitcom is funny. It all comes down to the writing... The writers on that show are so good that you don't have to worry about anything. There are so many things that can go wrong making a TV show or a movie, but if the writing's good, that's, like, 95 percent of it.

Guitar playing isn't really for everybody.

I've got so many big gains to make in the javelin and the shot put. I know I'm not going to be winning the field in those events, but I need to do myself justice.

I think that we are all much closer to our childhood selves than we often think, so when we read about childhood, it can surprise us how immediate or moving it is, when perhaps those feelings are just there, waiting to be accessed all the time.

Feeling confident in your ability to protect yourself empowers you to live with less fear and more freedom.

It can take years to mold a dream. It takes only a fraction of a second for it to be shattered.

I'm not always a smiley kind of guy.

I like being the underdog. I like turning around and shutting people up when they tell me I can't.

Yeah, one of the main ways is for songs that make me want to move.

Keep in mind that you need to stop comparing yourself with others. Don't seek validation by looking how well others are doing.

When I put out my first mixtape, '50 Cent is the Future,' it was the first tape where an artist did the entire tape in song format.

The vast majority of A.D.A.s put everything on the line to make sure justice is served. That's what I love about prosecutors and the New York police.

Death is the stone into which our oblivion hardens.

For years, American officials visiting China marvelled at how Chinese leaders could push through infrastructure projects and sweeping legislative changes without the complications of opposition and the niceties of voting.

Girls seem to get me in trouble a lot of times.

One can build from ordinary stone a humble house or the finest chateau.