if there is anyone who’s telling you, “Here’s what you should do,” they are somehow lying to you

There are a few things I dismiss and a few I believe in thoroughly. The former include economic forecasts, which I think don't add value, and the list of the latter starts with cycles and the need to prepare for them.

The life of a jazz musician is a difficult life, because you want to play, you want to be, you want to get to the inner spirit and sometimes you drink or you use drugs or you smoke a lot. You do all these things to try to get the spirit out. So it’s a difficult existence and a lot of the great people that I have known, and in history, they kind of over-indulge, and they never sort of are able to balance their musical life with their personal life. Maybe it’s not necessary to do that. That is another question, I don’t know, but I’d like to see young musicians coming up that don’t smoke and that don’t drink to excess and don’t use drugs, and don’t sort of debilitate themselves. I think that’s where we should go. I think that is what guys should be doing. I don’t think you have to drink and use drugs to play good jazz, but that’s been the model for so long that a lot of guys get caught up in that, you know.

Most investors, of course, have not made the study of business prospects a priority in their lives. If wise, they will conclude that they do not know enough about specific businesses to predict their future earning power. I have good news for these non-professionals: The typical investor doesn't need this skill. ... The goal of the non-professional should not be to pick winners – neither he nor his "helpers" can do that – but should rather be to own a cross-section of businesses that in aggregate are bound to do well. A low-cost S&P 500 index fund will achieve this goal.

It brings the freedom of having seen a lot of things and survived them.

The only habit you can rely in the Scarlet O'Hara rule: Tomorrow is another day. And you hope you are there for it.

I just lack the basic fact-finding instinct.

Beyond that, editing an anthology gives me a chance to find a few new readers for my colleagues’ excellent work.

I guess you’ve just got to take each day at a time

I’d read Something Happened, by Joe Heller; I’d read “A Fan’s Notes,” by Frederick Exley; and I’d read The Moviegoer, by Walker Percy.