Levitt admits to having the reading interests of a tweener girl, the Twilight series and Harry Potter in particular.

The conventional wisdom is often wrong.

No matter how expert you may be, well-designed checklists can improve outcomes.

Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work, wheareas economics represents how it actually does work.

An incentive is a bullet, a key: an often tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation

When people don’t pay the true cost of something, they tend to consume it inefficiently.

Solving a problem is hard enough; it gets that much harder if you’ve decided beforehand it can’t be done.

Purity is a good mask for corruption because it discourages inquiry.

Data, I think, is one of the most powerful mechanisms for telling stories. I take a huge pile of data and I try to get it to tell stories.

If you own a gun and have a swimming pool in the yard, the swimming pool is almost 100 times more likely to kill a child than the gun is.

Scarcity is a captivating book, overflowing with new ideas, fantastic stories, and simple suggestions that just might change the way you live.

Refuse to react to any angry actions.

... only a seer or a lover would know that I'm making a jewelry of words for you -drawn from your essence -to flash and burn with your fire -so you can bedazzle with your own light ...

As I love the name of honour more than I fear death.

The only way to become an eccentric is to end your relationship with extroverts.

As civilization grows more complex, it is simultaneously becoming increasingly interrelated. We are converging upon ourselves, and this is forcing us to relate.

I think I'd be pretty easy to write for.

I often wonder if there are certain areas of real life that are roped off, with a sign saying, "Art, don't come in here." But that's maybe a deeper question.

When a tree, a natural product, is felled, is society put into possession of no greater produce than that of the mere labour of the woodman?

Humble us, O God, under your mighty hand, and let us rise, not as professionals, but as witnesses and partakers of the sufferings of Christ.

Everything looks true written down. What you read in National Enquirer and News Of The World looks true written down.