“Age gives you an excuse for not being very good at things that you were not very good at when you were young.”

“George you were very very bad to run away from Alice. Very bad But you were very good to stomp Sinclair when he was being a dick so I think we'll call this a wash.”

“There were human cultures that taught an afterlife of the blessed on mountaintops or in clouds in caverns or oases but she could not recall any in which if you were very very good when you died you went to the beach.”

“The best thing you can do is get very good at being you.”

“Stealing, of course, is a crime, and a very impolite thing to do. But like most impolite things, it is excusable under certain circumstances. Stealing is not excusable if, for instance, you are in a museum and you decide that a certain painting would look better in your house, and you simply grab the painting and take it there. But if you were very, very hungry, and you had no way of obtaining money, it would be excusable to grab the painting, take it to your house, and eat it.”

“The biggest challenge to excellence is being good at something, because to move from good to great requires your willingness to re-think everything you’ve done that got you to be good. In fact, the very thing that got you where you are might be the very thing that stops you from going where you say you want to be.”