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.

I always found the film world unpleasant. It's all about the schedule, and never really flew for me.

The greatest remedy for anger is delay.

Jumping for joy is good exercise.

If you worry about disaster all the time thats what youre going to get.

It is only when we silent the blaring sounds of our daily existence that we can finally hear the whispers of truth that life reveals to us, as it stands knocking on the doorsteps of our hearts.

The offspring of riches: Pride, vanity, ostentation, arrogance, tyranny.

As a boxer, you have to put risk in to get to another level.

Good things when short are twice as good.

I remember hearing in first grade, 'Oh, why does she get to skip school?' It wasn't like I suddenly started feeling different. I always knew that I was. I never felt I missed out.

If they are really persuaded that the army is annually established by me, that I have the sole disposal of posts and honours, that I employ this power in the destruction of liberty and the diminution of commerce, let me awaken them from their delusion.

I've gone the full spectrum - from gospel to blues to jazz to soul to pop - and the public has accepted what I've done through it all. I think it means I've been doing something right at the right time.

To many people holidays are not voyages of discovery but a ritual of reassurance.

You educate a boy, and he'll have fewer children, but it's a small effect. You educate a girl, and, on average, she will have a significantly smaller family.

I don't really consider myself a writer.

I think I've achieved everything I wanted to.

One has to be very selective about what is essential for driving the story and what isn't. You leave out some things that are lovely, but unfortunately it is necessary.

Life is never boring but some people choose to be bored.

I was downright obnoxious. In second grade, we had some program where we kept a public list of all the books we read. I think it even included the number of pages. In my nerdy mind, having the longest and most impressive list was somehow going to make up for the fact that I couldn't climb a rope or do a backwards summersault in PE.

When I was fresh out of law school, I had a burning desire to do something important, to have an impact in some way, but I didn't know what it was.

Football is a game played with arms legs and shoulders but mostly from the neck up.

When I was first divorced, I started dating younger women, and it was really exciting. But after a while I was like, 'This is just dumb.'

I like to put people into situations that are out of their comfort zone and see what happens.

Well, for one thing, in the tradition of Zen that I've practiced, there is no prayerful worship and there is no affirmation of a deity.

I realize that humor isn't for everyone. It's only for people who want to have fun, enjoy life, and feel alive.