The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life

by Alice Schroeder

Both regarded rationality and honesty as the highest virtues. Quickened pulses and self-delusion, in their view, were the major causes of mistakes. They liked to ponder the reasons for failure as a way of deducing the rules of success.

It might seem easier to go through life as the echo—but only until the other guy plays a wrong note.

He could hold those pennies, weighty and solid, in his palm. They became the first few snowflakes in a snowball of money to come.

“It could make me independent. Then I could do what I wanted to do with my life. And the biggest thing I wanted to do was work for myself. I didn’t want other people directing me. The idea of doing what I wanted to do every day was important to me.”