They had large resources of compulsion at their disposal, but I was stubborn. Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn. In all the twelve years I was at school no one ever succeeded in making me write a Latin verse or learn any Greek except the alphabet. I do not at all excuse myself for this foolish neglect of opportunities procured at so much expense by my parents and brought so forcibly to my attention by my Preceptors.

Ironically, though, this is also the purchase in which I made my biggest mistake - of a kind, however, never recognized on financial statements. We paid $600 million in 1989 for Gillette preferred shares that were convertible into 48 million (split-adjusted) common shares. Taking an alternative route with the $600 million, I probably could have purchased 60 million shares of common from the company. The market on the common was then about $10.50, and given that this would have been a huge private placement carrying important restrictions, I probably could have bought the stock at a discount of at least 5%. I can't be sure about this, but it's likely that Gillette's management would have been just as happy to have Berkshire opt for common. But I was far too clever to do that.

I have the same academic disease that any academic will understand, that I get focused on the interesting because that’s appealing to me. Most of the time, most answers are boring. “It’s a respiratory disease. Wear a mask.” That’s a boring example. Trying to be too clever, too smart, almost too contrarian sometimes — I would say that is something that I fight in myself because, like a lot of academics and a lot of intellectual people, I like the answers that surprise me.

I probably want to be liked too much. This is one difference between me and Steve Levitt . Steve Levitt is also much smarter than me and much more successful than me. And that doesn’t bother me at all, but he said he also doesn’t care what anyone thinks about him, or doesn’t seem to care what anyone thinks about him. I actually do care what people think about me. I’d quite like people to think I’m a nice guy, so I’m probably self-censoring at times. Say, maybe I won’t say that because people wouldn’t like that. And that’s probably a fault in a newspaper columnist — you probably shouldn’t care what people think about you, but that’s the way it is.