But I didn't need to think about it

I knew what intellectual passion felt like because I'd felt it here, at Princeton and I wanted to feel it again

I was 26 years old. Had I waited until I was 36

I would never have done it

I would have forgotten the feeling, and would feel too risky

The book I wrote was called Liar's Poker

It sold a million copies

I was 28 years old. I had a career, a little fame a small fortune and a new life narrative

All of a sudden people were telling me I was a born writer

This was absurd. Even I could see there was another more true narrative, with luck as its theme

What were the odds of being seated at that dinner next to that Salomon Brothers lady?

Of landing inside the best Wall Street firm to write the story of an age?

Of landing in the seat with the best view of the business?

Of having parents who didn't disinherit me but instead sighed and said do it if you must?

Of having had that sense of must kindled inside me by a professor of art history at Princeton?

Of having been let into Princeton in the first place?

This isn't just false humility. It's false humility with a point

My case illustrates how success is always rationalized

People really don't like to hear success explained away as luck especially successful people

As they age, and succeed people feel their success was somehow inevitable