Achievements have greater appeal as failures, therefore they are systematically overrated. The media usually reportes only about stars, the unsuccessful are not mentioned. Therfore we end up a distorted perception of the real chances. It is useful to study the unsuccessful. #SurvivorshipBias

Behind each successful author hide 100 unsuccessful, behind each unsuccessful there are 100 that did not find a publisher, behind each of them there 100 who have not yet completed their manuscript .... But in the news only the stars get the whole attention.

Should you ever be sent to war, and you don’t agree with its goals, desert.

There are two kinds of forecasters: those who don’t know, and those who don’t know they don’t know

do you have at least one enemy? Good. Invite him or her over for coffee and ask for an honest opinion about your strengths and weaknesses. You will be forever grateful you did.

If 50 million people say something foolish, it is still foolish.

If you spend fifteen minutes in a shopping mall, you will pass more people than our ancestors saw during their entire lifetimes.

The more people do something, the more likely we are willing to follow. But this doesn´t make it automatically right, funny, good... Applause at the concert, laughing at shows, walk over a red traffic light

Impatience is a great obstacle to success; he who treats everything with brusqueness gathers nothing, or only immature fruit which will never ripen.

I would go to sketch groups and draw. I really enjoyed the subject matter, but I wasn't good at it.

Coming from a middle class background, travel was always considered a luxury then, even if it meant going to a relative's place or a religious shrine.

My nickname for my mom was 'The Compass.'

I would lying if I said I would laugh in the face of death.

I still think that we have a hesitance to talk about things racial. And I think we do it at our detriment. We go from incident to incident, and we have spikes in which race becomes something that we talk about, as opposed to talking about race in those less contentious times when I think we might make more progress.

You know, I'm not a revolutionary.

Get a grip get a life and get over it.

Since I've been hired to contribute to the storyline of 'Doom 4' I can say what was always true anyway. I'm working. You see, for a writer, lots of stuff that doesn't look like working is actually working. Looking out of the window, for example. Balancing a pencil on the edge of the desk in order to find its exact fulcrum. Playing 'Doom.'

Until very recently, the artist was a magician who did his magic in public view but kept himself and his effects a matter of mystery.

Never let the odds keep you from doing what you know in your heart you were meant to do.

I know every note in every song, the whole history of it, even parts that were there and are gone.

I come from a class which used to be called the gentry - which is nowadays mistakenly used to include the nobility, but in fact is not. The gentry was essentially the untitled landowning class.

But if two's company, three's a crowd - and that demands the omniscient point of view.

Matthew Wiener on 'Mad Men' writes the entire series before they start shooting, and if you have that, then what you can do with character and story is not at all unlike what you can do in a novel.

Occasionally, I make waffles for breakfast for any employee who wants to talk to me. I make them around 8 A.M. as an incentive for people to show up early.

I find it beautiful when we're in Italy that everybody sits down at the table together. My mother-in-law is like, 'It doesn't matter what's going on in the house, who is fighting, who is upset, who has appointments, you sit down at that table at one o'clock.'

In fact, I think - our view of this is that while the agreement, the compromise did not achieve the kind of super-sized deficit reduction that we sought, it did end the uncertainty around the perception, the possibility that the United States might default on its obligations for its first time. That was a good thing.

Love is made by trust, respect, and caring.

I don't think of myself as a movie star. I'm a movie worker. I come from a railroad family. I come from the corn.

Every American has the duty to obey the law and the right to expect that the law will be enforced.

Anger is wonderful. It keeps you going. I'm angry about bankers. About the government.

Like any traveler, I'm always looking for those experiences that are almost unique to any place, and watching films around Alaska of the skies in winter made me want to taste those unworldly showers of light in person.

Without travel I would have wound up a little ignorant white Southern female, which was not my idea of a good life.