Never neglect details. When everyone's mind is dulled or distracted the leader must be doubly vigilant.

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.

Pissing people off doesn't mean you're doing the right things, but doing the right things will almost inevitably piss people off.

A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.

None of us can change our yesterdays but all of us can change our tomorrows.

If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.

Effective leaders are made, not born. They learn from trial and error, and from experience.

The most important thing I learned is that soldiers watch what their leaders do. You can give them classes and lecture them forever, but it is your personal example they will follow.

Respect for leaders by followers can't be mandated; it must be earned. It has to be given to leaders by their followers.

Get mad, then get over it.

Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.

Fatigue fatigue is when you're tired of being tired.

If the story-tellers could ha' got decency and good morals from true stories, who'd have troubled to invent parables?

I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.

Flanked by his personal guardsmen, Emperor Gevalen walked toward me, never letting go of me with his eyes. It was thrilling and terrifying all at once.

Parents spend a lot of time talking over kids. My son went through a vocabulary burst as I was writing The Bear. I thought, What if I just stopped and listened?

I see psychoanalysis, art and biology ultimately coming together, just like cognitive psychology and neuroscience have merged.

In a portrait, I’m looking for the silence in somebody.

There is probably some long-standing "rule" among writers, journalists, and other word-mongers that says: "When you start stealing from your own work you're in bad trouble." And it may be true.

This is a world of process, not a world of things.

If there was no black man there would be no Rock'n'Roll. The beat, the rhythms of Africa are what created Rock'n'Roll and Jazz.