These all sounded really bad, but they turned out to be good. If they had sounded really good, there would have been too many people working on them.

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.

As for the journey of life

Identify confident people whom you admire and respect and notice what they do differently to project such confidence. Learn by observing role models.

And to get real work experience, you need a job, and most jobs will require you to have had either real work experience or a graduate degree.

I like to do interior design, I love to quilt, I love to see different colors together, and I love to match things up.

There's a terrible delight in watching a rival sink without a trace

The pressed oil of words can blaze up into music, into image, into the heart and mind's knowledge. The lit and shadowed places within us can be warmed.

Empires want [cities] only to trade with the empire, which doesn't help them at all. It's just a way of exploiting them.

Think about me lightly, think of me, and forget.

A woman without paint is like food without salt.

Vegas is great, isn't it, man? This is the greatest place on Earth. Lookit; you have everything you could want; adult movies...this is a nice neighborhood!