Wendy

“Mild success can be explainable by skills and labor. Wild success is attributable to variance.”
― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

“How much sweeter life would be if it all happened in reverse, if, after decades of disappointments, you finally arrived at an age when you had conceded nothing, when everything was possible.”
― Karen Thompson Walker, The Age of Miracles

“a European executive who works for a company that has failed is an executive who no longer has a career. In America, by contrast, having tried (and failed) to start your own company is often a résumé booster—particularly in the fertile fields of Silicon Valley. It marks you as a risk taker, a self-starter, someone who is not afraid to shoulder a whole lot of responsibility. And the (correct) assumption is that in your failure, you’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons that your new employer will benefit from. On the two continents, the exact same set of circumstances signal wildly different things: in Europe, that you are irresponsible, and perhaps too lazy and incompetent to run a business, in America, that you are a risk taker and a visionary.”
― Megan McArdle, The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success

“The great civil rights leader Howard Thurman once said, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs most is more people who have come alive.”
― Steven Kotler, The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance