Sublime

Murphy had an unusual negotiating style. He believed in “leaving something on the table” for the seller and said that in the best transactions, everyone came away happy. He would often ask the seller what they thought their property was worth, and if he thought their offer was fair he’d take it (as he did when Annenberg told him the Triangle

... See more

He believed a handshake agreement among gentlemen was sufficient and regularly did business with no written contract.

The younger lawyer was named Marcus, he was from Shaker Heights, he had attended Penn, where he had majored in philosophy and lettered in rowing. After a stint working in a rural Mississippi town with Teach for America, he had gone on to Stanford Law School. He had a lovely wife of Korean ancestry and a six-month-old baby and was just days away

... See more

“Didn’t you?” Albert looked at Bob and the two of them started laughing at the thought of the old couple pulling strings. But Roy could see that Danny was telling the truth; that Danny’s instinct to protect Roy had been as genuine as Harvey’s was calculated. But there was still no escaping that the man was the law and had come to put them all down.

... See more

I asked Rob what he thought was the most revealing detail in his book. He thought for a moment before saying that it was the way Dalio treated his longtime number two and protégé, Greg Jensen . Jensen, as the book conveys, was a devoted Dalio acolyte of both the man and his Principles. Jensen was hoping to succeed Dalio and kept waiting and waiting... See more

Murphy was a highly disciplined buyer who had strict return requirements and did not stretch for acquisitions—once missing a very large newspaper transaction involving three Texas properties over a $5 million difference in price. Like others in this book, he relied on simple but powerful rules in evaluating transactions. For Murphy, that benchmark

... See more

Killick was a cross-grained bastard, who supposed that if he sprinkled his discourse with a good many sirs, the words in between did not signify: but still he had procured this coffee, these eggs, this butter, this soft tack, on shore and had put them on the table the morning after a hot engagement – ship still cleared for action and the galley

... See more