You walk into the class in second grade. You can't read. What are you going to do if you're going to make it? You identify the smart kid. You make friends with him. You sit next to him. You grow a team around you. You delegate your work to others. You learn how to talk your way out of a tight spot.
— Malcolm Gladwell
I am a story-teller, and I look to academic research... for ways of augmenting story-telling.
In my mid-adolescence, my friend Terry Martin and I became obsessed with William F. Buckley. This makes more sense when you realize that we were living in Bible Belt farming country miles from civilization. Buckley seemed impossibly exotic.
In cognitively demanding fields, there are no naturals. Nobody walks into an operating room straight out of a surgical rotation and does world-class neurosurgery.
In cross-country skiing, athletes propel themselves over distances of ten and twenty miles - a physical challenge that places intense demands on the ability of their red blood cells to deliver oxygen to their muscles.
Countless religious innovators over the years have played the game of establishing an identity for themselves by accentuating their otherness.
People in great institutions are occasionally credulous.
I am far more distress-avoidant than I am joy-seeking.
For some small number of people, a parental loss appears to be, ultimately, a desirable difficulty - again, not a large number.
Shallow communities are relatively easy to build.
I don't want a door bell. I don't want anyone ringing my door bell... seems to be intrusive. They can call me on their cell phones.
Consistency is the most overrated of all human virtues... I'm someone who changes his mind all the time.
If you're smarter than me, you shouldn't be reading my books.
We all assume that if you're weak and poor, you're never going to win. In fact, the real world is full of examples where the exact opposite happens, where the weak win and the strong screw up.
Rarely do we stop and consider whether the most prestigious of institutions is always in our best interest.
It's very hard to find someone who's successful and dislikes what they do.
The most common form of giantism is a condition called acromegaly, and acromegaly is caused by a benign tumor on your pituitary gland that causes an overproduction of human growth hormone. And throughout history, many of the most famous giants have all had acromegaly.
Many people with dyslexia truly suffer, and their lives are worse off for having had that disability.
My rule is that if I interview someone, they should never read what I have to say about them and regret having given me the interview.
The two contemporary writers whom I consider as role models are Janet Malcolm and Michael Lewis.
The paradox of endurance sports is that an athlete can never work as hard as he wants, because if he pushes himself too far, his hematocrit will fall.
The injunction to be nice is used to deflect criticism and stifle the legitimate anger of dissent.
It is useful to compare the Branch Davidians with the Mormons of the mid-nineteenth century. The Mormons were vilified in those years in large part because Joseph Smith believed in polygamy.
Books about spies and traitors - and the congressional hearings that follow the exposure of traitors - generally assume that false-negative errors are much worse than false-positive errors.
I remember as a kid watching one of the Olympic games, and I was cheering for a big track athlete. He was the favorite to win, and he lost. I realized in that moment the pain he felt was so much greater than the pain that those who never thought they were going to win would have felt had they lost.
There is an important idea in psychology: The 'just world theory,' which says that it is very important for us to convince ourselves that the world is just and things happen for a reason. That there is some elemental fairness in everything, which creates the illusion of justice.
You don't train someone for all of those years of medical school and residency, particularly people who want to help others optimize their physical and psychological health, and then have them run a claims-processing operation for insurance companies.
People assume when my hair is long that I am a lot cooler than I actually am. I am not opposed to this misconception, by the way, but it is a misconception.
If I was President of the United States, I'd rather be right than interesting. If I was CEO of a company, I'd rather be right than interesting. But I'm a journalist - what journalist would rather be right than interesting?
A lot of what is most beautiful about the world arises from struggle.
All my books are optimistic!
The older I get, the more I understand that the only way to say valuable things is to lose your fear of being correct.
As a writer, the best mindset is to be unafraid.
From medieval tapestries, we know that slingers were capable of hitting birds in flight. They were incredibly accurate.
I don't golf. I've never golfed. I will never golf.
I don't think I will ever write about politics or foreign policy. I feel like there is so much good writing in those areas that I have little to add. I also like to steer clear of writing about people whom I do not personally like.
When people from organizations like the World Bank descended on Third World countries, they always tried to remove obstacles to development, to reduce economic anxiety and uncertainty.
A runner needs not just to be skinny but - more specifically - to have skinny calves and ankles, because every extra pound carried on your extremities costs more than a pound carried on your torso. That's why shaving even a few ounces off a pair of running shoes can have a significant effect.
Mainstream American society finds it easiest to be tolerant when the outsider chooses to minimize the differences that separate him from the majority. The country club opens its doors to Jews. The university welcomes African-Americans. Heterosexuals extend the privilege of marriage to the gay community.
In the government's eyes, the Branch Davidians were a threat.
All three of the great waves of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century European immigrants to America innovated.
If you are going to do something truly innovative, you have to be someone who does not value social approval. You can't need social approval to go forward. Otherwise, how would you ever do the thing that you are doing?
A handicap is like trying to race and you have a ten pound weight stuck to your waist. That is a handicap.
I don't understand, given the constraints physicians have in doing their job and the paperwork demanded of them, why people want to be physicians. I think we've made it very, very difficult for them to perform their job. I think that's a shame.
I'm a lot more interested in people than I used to be. I used to be most interested in abstract ideas, and people were an afterthought, but that's changed a bit.
I wrote my first book when I was in my late thirties.
I've had the most untraumatic life a human being can have. But I've always been drawn to those who have had far more complicated histories.
I grew up in southwestern Ontario in the heart of a Mennonite community. All my family are part of the Mennonite church.
I try to be unafraid of making a fool of myself.
Do you remember the wrestler Andre the Giant? Famous. He had acromegaly.
