Every form of strength is also a form of weakness,” he once wrote. “Pretty girls tend to become insufferable because, being pretty, their faults are too much tolerated. Possessions entrap men, and wealth paralyzes them. I learned to write because I am one of those people who somehow cannot manage the common communications of smiles and gestures, but must use words to get across things that other people would never need to say.

— Michael Lewis

Foodstuffs absolved of the obligation to provide vitamins and minerals cavorted with reckless abandon.

— Michael Lewis

He shouted into the phone, “That is fuckin’ awesome. I mean fuckin’ awesome. I fuckin’ mean fucking awesome. You are one Big Swinging Dick, and don’t ever let anybody tell you different.” It brought tears to my eyes to hear it, to be called a Big Swinging Dick by the man who, years ago, had given birth to the distinction and in my mind had the greatest right to confer it upon me.

— Michael Lewis

He was the guy who always won the game of chicken because his opponents suspected he might actually enjoy a head-on collision.

— Michael Lewis

Holding one's self-responsible is a critical feature in stigma and in the generation of shame since violation of standards, rules, and goals are insufficient in its elicitation unless responsibility can be placed on the self. Stigma may differ from other electors of shame and guilt, in part because it is a social appearance factor. The degree to which the stigma is socially apparent is the degree to which one must negotiate the issue of blame, not only for one's self but between one's self and the other who is witness to the stigma. Stigmatization is a much more powerful elicit or of shame and guilt in that it requires a negotiation not only between one's self and one's attributions, but between one's self and the attributions of others.

— Michael Lewis

If you’ve got a dozen pitchers, you need to speak 12 different languages.

— Michael Lewis

I hated discussing ideas with investors," he said, "because I then become a Defender of the Idea, and that influences your thought process." Once you became an idea's defender you had a harder time changing your mind about it.

— Michael Lewis

I share your feeling that such behavior is, in some sense, unwise or erroneous, but this does not mean that it does not occur,' Amos wrote to an American economist who complained about the description of human nature implied by 'Value Theory.' 'A theory of vision cannot be faulted for predicting optical illusions. Similarly, a descriptive theory of choice cannot be rejected on the grounds that it predicts 'irrational behavior' if the behavior in question is in fact observed.

— Michael Lewis

It was the job of people like me to make up reasons, to spin a plausible yarn. And it’s amazing what people will believe. Heavy selling out of the Middle East was an old standby. Since no one ever had any clue what the Arabs were doing with their money or why, no story involving Arabs could ever be refuted. So if you didn’t know why the dollar was falling, you shouted out something about Arabs.

— Michael Lewis

Memory loss is the key to human reproduction. If you remembered what new parenthood was actually like you wouldn’t go around lying to people about how wonderful it is, and you certainly wouldn’t ever do it twice.

— Michael Lewis