“Flom had the same experience...He didn't triumph over adversity. Instead, what started out as adversity ended up being an opportunity.”

“He was maxed out. He had noresources left to do anything else. That's what happenswhen you're tired. Your decision-making skills erode. Youstart missing things—things that you would pick up onany other day.”

“Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don't. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky--but all critical to making them who they are. The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.”

“Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.”

“being able to act intelligently and instinctively in the moment is possible only after a long and rigorous of education and experience”

“he waits for the kid to decide whether to pull the gun up or simply to drop it - and all the while, even as he tracks the progress of the gun, he is also watching the kid's face, to see whether he is dangerous or simply frightened. is there a more beautiful example of a snap judgment? this is the gift of training and expertise - the ability to extract an enormous amount of meaningful information from the very thinnest slice of experience.”

“our unconscious reactions come out of a locked room, and we can't look inside that room. but with experience we become expert at using our behavior and our training to interpret - and decode - what lies behind our snap judgment and first impressions.”