I’ve always thought most book reviews are too long,” he says, explaining his truncated reviews. “People read the review as a substitute for reading the book, whereas the review should get you to read the book, ideally. The best for that would be very short book reviews; some are just three or four words long. A long one might be 10 words, but you try to make the book sound intriguing.

Nostalgia, from friends or from enemies or enemies pretending to be new friends is ever what will drag you back into old lifestyles and repeating old mistakes. “You used to be …” or “What happened to you, man?” or “For old time’s sake …” have been the preludes to a lot of regressive moves. We all know somebody we’re probably better off leaving in the past, lest we get ourselves into trouble.

We hear “do what you love” so often from those few people who it did work for, for whom the stars aligned, and from them it sounds like good advice. They’re successful, aren’t they? If we follow their advice, we’ll be successful, too! […] We rarely hear the advice of the person who did what they loved and stayed poor or was horribly injured for it. Professional gamblers, stuntmen, washed up cartoonists like myself: we don’t give speeches at corporate events. We aren’t paid to go to the World Domination Summit and make people feel bad. We don’t land book deals or speak on Good Morning America.

Mixed [martial] artist Ronda Rousey was overseeing a group of fighters during a training session. One fighter, who was heavily favored to win was slacking off. Rousey approached the fighter and said that she wasn’t training to be the best in the next fight, she was training to be the best on her worst day.