I began to experience the most powerful advantage of money: the ability to think of things besides money. My professors came into focus, suddenly and sharply; it was as if before the grant I’d been looking at them through a blurred lens. My textbooks began to make sense, and I found myself doing more than the required reading.

how to let them. I was ready to yield, even if it meant an exorcism.

retaining power always feels like the way forward.

positive liberty is self-mastery—the rule of the self, by the self. To have positive liberty, he explained, is to take control of one’s own mind; to be liberated from irrational fears and beliefs, from addictions, superstitions and all other forms of self-coercion.

I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create.