Love relationships, paradoxically, prioritize emotions above these considerations, which often turns out to be their downfall. What truly sustains us is what we mutually agree upon as beneficial and righteous, irrespective of our emotional state.

To be a billionaire in America today is less a matter of merit than it is a matter of being at the right place at the right time, and being a beneficiary of a set of rules designed to benefit billionaires.

What they found was that the majority of people — above 50% — maintained cognitive function from their 50s into their 80s. We knew this more than fifty years ago.

Capital has poured into San Francisco and the Bay Area but the growth hasn't distributed itself beyond the top percentile of the community. If you are in one of these companies, you may have a stable and survivable life in the Bay Area, but if you're not? You're going to have to make some incredible trade-offs.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

You must tell yourself the truth about money if you're going to give it away well. If you can't live well with $999 million, there's something clearly wrong with you.

Trust is a confident relationship with the unknown. Trust isn't, at its essence, an asset or an attribute or a currency. It's a belief. It's what we believe about someone or something.

When I have a bad day, that has nothing to do with the market! But how I respond to that bad day may be a reflection of a general level of discomfort about how the economy is doing and so forth. It's an out-of-bounds signal. In that sense, it's pretty unique!

Magic is this incredibly weird bondage and discipline you make where you say to someone, 'do this thing to me that's morally wrong… you have my consent…' – once you give your consent, the morality changes.

Song writing is about finding a vision that sets the mood and state for the work and process. Then you need to put in the time and the good vibes to achieve that vision.

Guantánamo has created more terrorists than have ever passed through. It is the major recruiting tool used… it inhibits the United States' ability to talk about human rights on a global scale… when you have the UN calling-up the United States on their human rights abuses at Guantánamo it makes it very difficult for the United States to then go to other places in the world and demand that they apply human rights.

It's this natural propensity to analyse and optimize everything around me, turning mundane tasks like loading a dishwasher into a strategic game of Tetris, that highlights how my brain operates. It's an instinctive approach to life, viewing the world through the lens of systems and structures.