Joy is something entirely different from pleasure.
My characters are actually usually pretty smart and admirable.
The pleasure of rooting for Goliath is that you can expect to win. The pleasure of rooting for David is that, while you don’t know what to expect, you stand at least a chance of being inspired.
People don't like uncertainty, and their minds are tools for making sense of the world, even when the world is senseless.
We aren't natural statisticians. What we are is natural storytelling machines. And so what we do after we have the facts in hand is build a story to explain the facts.
the lesson of Buffett was: To succeed in a spectacular fashion you had to be spectacularly unusual.
As idiotic as optimism can sometimes seem, it has a weird habit of paying off.
We're dealing with fundamentalists. . . the Amish are fundamentalists, but they don't try and hijack a carriage at needlepoint. And, if you're ever in Amish country and you see a man with his hand buried in a horse's ass, that's a mechanic. Remember that.
Colleges need learning, faith, and freedom. Each reinforces the others, each makes the others possible. For what are they without each other?
After I left college, I went to work at the Royal Opera House in London, which became a real catalyst for me because it made me realize that I was interested in cinema and in the way life is thrust at you. So I started making films.
Each man's hell is in a different place: mine is just up and behind my ruined face.