What separates the professionally successful ... from all the rest is their ability to stay steady, to have stamina. It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book.

It should be everyone's right in a capitalist system to have some way to take advantage of compound interest.

There is, in the heart, the hard-rendering profit. As if we were plucking the leaves from the trees.

The sum of the parts equals less than the whole. Or the howl. Or the how. Or the hole.

I think it is extremely interesting to think that, in some cases, vice might be, finally, more redemptive than virtue.

I'm more interested in the writing than in the content per se (good writing can be about wallpaper and I'll devour it).

It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book.

When I moved to New York, the reputation just followed me, and I am regularly invited to play in home games, by writers in particular, though finance folk also invite me on occasion.

Poetry is God's work.

It is bizarre that some people can't understand how a serious poet could work at a finance firm. Goethe was a bureaucrat. Eliot worked as a banker.

I do think most poets are in denial about what the real taboos in writing are--the real boundaries.

Some things aren't meant to be known. Only believed.

Lately Mirabelle had reflected wistfully if people even noticed her – a smartly dressed woman who came and went along the Promenade, always alone.

God respects me when I work but loves me when I sing.

One of the biggest mistakes women make in business is that they aren't friendly enough.

To me, it looks like an opportunity for school choice. I'd also like to see a pilot program to allow true school choice ? vouchers.

You become that to which you are most exposed.

The important thing right now is that the economy still needs customers. We still need people to go out there and spend money.

It's helpful to be prepared to celebrate the tiny things that you can do, where you meet the world and you negotiate an outcome that's quite tiny. But you can still make it feel remarkable.

I try to separate my personal life from swimming.

I like to put a little spin on traditional styles as I see them now, probably somewhat inspired by my current job on Boardwalk Empire.