My first mistake, of course, was in buying control of Berkshire. Though I knew its business - textile manufacturing - to be unpromising, I was enticed to buy because the price looked cheap. Stock purchases of that kind had proved reasonably rewarding in my early years, though by the time Berkshire came along in 1965 I was becoming aware that the strategy was not ideal. If you buy a stock at a sufficiently low price, there will usually be some hiccup in the fortunes of the business that gives you a chance to unload at a decent profit, even though the long-term performance of the business may be terrible. I call this the "cigar butt" approach to investing. A cigar butt found on the street that has only one puff left in it may not offer much of a smoke, but the "bargain purchase" will make that puff all profit. Unless you are a liquidator, that kind of approach to buying businesses is foolish.

As hard as it's been to come to this decision, I am at peace with it. I have no regrets. I was not supposed to be here in the first place, remember? Not many people believed in my talent and my abilities, yet I found a way to persevere, to prove them (and sometimes myself!) wrong.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

The world would say it was failure. But the difference was so small between us. They played great, but they lost.

I’ve had a couple of ex-girlfriends sort of accuse me of having a personality disorder! … No, I don’t know. I’ve always been afraid of death. I’ve never wanted to die. Last year, I watched this guy die in Red Rock. It was this horrible freak accident thing. He fell and he cracked his head and basically just bled out. That was the first time I’d ever actually seen a climbing accident like that. It was kind of sobering — he was even wearing a helmet — it was a reminder of how dangerous climbing can be if things go wrong even when you have all the ropes on.

No, I don’t really worry that much when I sleep. I mean, the stuff that I get stressed about is all like real life stuff with, you know, dealing with email and responding to calls and like, you know, hustling and I don’t know, like doing my taxes. You know, like all the stuff that I’m just like not good at.

Well, 20 is still slightly too old, but like my 18-year-old self, I would just tell to – I would say to just not bother going to college at all. Because like the year that I spent at Berkeley was a total waste of my time, basically. Not because there’s anything wrong with Berkeley, but because I just wasn’t passionate about what I was studying, and there’s no – there was no point in me like grinding out a year of studies that I didn’t care about.

I pretty much always just get up and have like a big breakfast and then go climbing. That’s kind of the standard.

Thanks for asking, this is a bit of a cool side project for me. The main thing that motivated me to start it was just a general feeling that I had more than I needed and that I should give back. I donate money through a charitable foundation (rather than just through personal checks) in the hope that it will inspire others to consider supporting causes that they believe in.

some of the most noteworthy books I’ve read I guess, like A People’s History of the US, the Howard Zinn book totally changed the way I look at politics. And then in the same way I read a book recently called Sacred Economics that like totally changed the way I looked at economics.