Main Street investors, who cannot trade credit default swaps, should not be tempted to trade an instrument with the same risk profile simply because it has been given a different name.

Consumer groups fought hard to provide investor protections for 'special entities' such as pension funds, schools, and municipalities who purchase swaps. No comparable protection exists in the futures market.

I believe we're all endowed with a very small set of narrow skills that make us unique. You've got to find what that is. Most often what you truly understand makes you unique is something that you're also going to build passion around.

I ran the effort to bring the 2012 Olympic Games to New York City. We lost - on a global scale. To my surprise, life went on, and I learnt that nobody cares about your failures as much as you do.

Teaching in the upper elementary grades had given me a deep appreciation of the gifts and graces that are specific to individuals with ten or eleven years of experience as human beings. It is, I think, a magical time - when so much has been learned, but not yet enough to entirely extinguish the magical reach and freedom of early childhood.

When you're in love, you've found your soul mate, you think life is going one way, and suddenly it's completely apparent it's not. You have to rethink your whole purpose.

If you knew that your life was merely a phase or short, short segment of your entire existence, how would you live? Knowing nothing 'real' was at risk, what would you do? You'd live a gigantic, bold, fun, dazzling life. You know you would. That's what the ghosts want us to do - all the exciting things they no longer can.

The truth is, I like to engage with life fully. Given an opportunity to do something I don't often get a chance to do, I feel the need to try it, even if I suspect I'll make a fool out of myself.