If you're not in college and you don't know a cofounder, the next best thing I think is to go work at an interesting company.

No matter what you choose, build stuff and be around smart people.

You can create value with breakthrough innovation, incremental refinement, or complex coordination. Great companies often do two of these. The very best companies do all three.

Founders are usually very stingy with equity to employees and very generous with equity to investors. I think this is totally backwards.

Obsess about the quality of the product.

In general don't start a startup you're not willing to work on for ten years.

Everyone starting a startup for the first time is scared, and everyone feels like a bit of an imposter.

No growth hack, brilliant marketing idea, or sales team can save you long term if you don't have a sufficiently good product.

You have to be decisive. Indecisiveness is a startup killer.

Execution gets divided into two key questions: 1) can you figure out what to do and 2) can you get it done.

If you don't need it yourself, and you're building something that someone else needs, realize you're at a big disadvantage.

Wasn’t hitting bottom the thing you had to do to knock some sense into yourself? Wasn’t hitting bottom the thing that showed you which way was up?

We watch the sky, we watch it alive and we watch it die, looking for signs. We live like wind, with hope in wings that we will get there, never sooner or never later, but at a right time.

Hollywood is full of guys who say one thing, and then do another.

It feels like each time we are beginning at the beginning, in a really exciting way.

How tranquil is a coral tomb, and may the heavens grant that my companions and I be buried in no other!

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.

Denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.

I think everyone has a certain kind of formula in their life. When you deviate from that formula, you're going to fail big or you're gonna win big.

People want honest, flavourful food, not some show-off meal that takes days to prepare.

Clearly much that seemed valid seemed so only because he had been taught it from earliest youth.