我是个失败的诗人。也许每个小说家最初都想写诗，发现自己做不到后尝试短篇小说——那是仅次于诗歌要求最高的形式。连这个也失败了，他才会转向长篇小说。

Is there any relief from some of thesepressures that I've been outlining? I think there is. I just want to turn to afew of them. Let's take meritocracy. This idea that everybody deserves to getwhere they get to, I think it's a crazy idea, completely crazy. I will support any politician of Left and Right, with any halfway-decent meritocratic idea; I am a meritocrat in that sense. But I think it's insane to believe that we will ever make a society that is genuinely meritocratic; it's an impossible dream.

The only thing more painful than being an active forgetter is to be an inert rememberer.

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

真正的领导力在于赋能他人实现他们的潜力。