You want the book to be special, and they are not always going to be special, but at least you want that to be the ambition. So the only way that happens is if you are not pressing to write a book. Michael Lewis More Quotes by Michael Lewis More Quotes From Michael Lewis Here was a strange but true fact: The closer you were to the market, the harder it was to perceive its folly. Michael Lewis true-fact strange facts The world clings to its old mental picture of the stock market because it’s comforting; because it’s so hard to draw a picture of what has replaced it; and because the few people able to draw it for you have no interest in doing so. Michael Lewis able comforting people Incredibly, at this critical juncture in financial history, after which so much changed so quickly, the only constraint in the subprime mortgage market was a shortage of people willing to bet against it. Michael Lewis mortgage financial people At SGI board meetings... Jim Clark's face would get red and he'd start shouting that an investor and board member had cheated him and his engineers. Michael Lewis entrepreneur red boards I procrastinate to a point where I'm filled with self-loathing and then I start writing. It's usually a state of self-loathing that gets me going. Michael Lewis loathing self writing Thirdly-but not lastly-there was the bias toward what people saw with their own eyes, or thought they had seen. The human mind played tricks on itself when it relied exclusively on what it saw. There was a lot you couldn't see when you watched a game Michael Lewis volleyball eye games Some coaches believed they could judge a player's performance simply by watching it. In this they were deeply mistaken. The naked eye was an inadequate tool for learning what you needed to know to evaluate baseball players and baseball games. Think about it. One absolutely cannot tell, by watching, the difference between a .300 hitter and a .275 hitter. The difference is one hit every two weeks. The difference between a good hitter and an average hitter is simply not visible-it is a matter of record Michael Lewis volleyball eye baseball There's no point in arguing with partisan supporters. Their views are their identity. Nothing you can tell the most phlegmatic follower. Michael Lewis identity views art In Japan, mothers insist on achievement and accomplishment as a sign of love and respect. Thus to fail places children in a highly shamed situation. Michael Lewis japan mother children Why pay $20 million to Harrison Ford? I dont even understand that. They think they have to do it... If someone puts a price on himself, that suggests he is irreplaceable, then he better find somewhere else to work. Michael Lewis somewhere-else pay thinking When the last history of high-frequency trading is written, Hunsader, like Joe Saluzzi and Sal Arnuk of Themis Trading, deserves a prominent place in it. Michael Lewis prominent trading lasts People in the voting booth are not purely rational creatures any more than they're purely rational creatures outside the voting booth. Michael Lewis rational voting people I'd say part of the appeal of Trump is that he's presenting himself as a totally certain, infallible person. Michael Lewis appeals trump certain If you're the kind of kid who thinks that all that's important in life is making money, Wall Street is probably still the place to go, especially now that Trump's elected. Michael Lewis wall kids thinking My characters are actually usually pretty smart and admirable. Michael Lewis admirable smart character You can anchor the mind into answering a question a certain way by giving them a totally unrelated piece of information dropped before. Michael Lewis anchors mind giving The thing I'm most afraid of is what happens when these people who voted for Donald Trump realize he's not going to do anything for them and that he's not an antidote to what ails them. His whole movement runs on anger, and if it doesn't have anger, it doesn't go anywhere. Michael Lewis movement running people Donald Trump got almost 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton! He happened to get more in some of the right places. It was just like one of those things where a stock going up and people impose a false sense of order on it. It's really more intellectually honestly viewed as a disorderly process. Michael Lewis vote order people The vicious cycle that is bringing down European states is not going to hit us [the USA], at least not for a while, at the level of the federal government. The same cannot be said of state and local governments. Michael Lewis usa levels government You could argue the banks are much better capitalised than they were going into the crisis, and everyone's in a much more vigilant state because they still remember the crisis. Michael Lewis states arguing remember
