"Failure is inherent in the game. So if you don't respond well to adversity, you're probably not going to have a long career."
"The Cubs, we built one of best farm systems - I think for a while there, it was the best farm system in baseball. And that was great. It got a lot of attention. But we didn't want the credit for the farm system. What we wanted was to see if we could do the tricky part, which was turn a lauded farm system into a World Series champion."
"If you reach a point where your entire farm system is in the big leagues, you've traded a couple guys for players who are now in the big leagues, you know what you do? You start over in your farm system, and you keep developing the talented players you have."
"If I let my brain follow its path unfettered, it would be kinda ugly."
"I don't think I'm a chameleon. I can feel where people are coming from, what makes them tick, where they are vulnerable, what makes them feel good about themselves. I get just as much out of it as they do. I love connecting."
"It's a human phenomenon that there has to be a reason for everything. There almost never is."
"I used to follow people home. I just like being anonymous so much that I would follow people home because they didn't know who I was, and I could watch them. I know how that sounds. I could not exist but observe."
"Baseball is a game based on adversity. It's a game that's going to test you repeatedly. It's going to find your weaknesses and vulnerabilities and force you to adjust. That adversity, in the big picture, is a really good thing because it shows you where your weaknesses are. It gives you the opportunity to improve."
"The 2011 Cubs were the oldest team in the division, the most expensive team in the division, and the worst team in the division. And we really needed to start over."
"Players that tend to respond to adversity the right way and triumph in the end are players with strong character. If you have enough guys like that in the clubhouse, you have an edge on the other team."
"We try to do a great job of understanding the opposing hitter and his tendencies. Maybe understand the hitter better than he knows himself."
"I think everyone deserves more than one World Series every 108 years so."
"No one is immune to needing to sit or needing to go down at the right time, and you want to give guys a chance."
"You just make the right baseball decision. You don't necessarily worry about somebody's feelings or anything like that. You make the right baseball decision for the team first and then for the player's development as importantly."
"The fact that guys adjusted really quickly to the big leagues, developed really quickly, faced adversity under the brightest spotlights, played great baseball, overcame so much, overcame centuries worth of issues and won a World Series, I guess it doesn't necessarily mean we're still not just prone to the laws of nature and reality and baseball."
"I believe in our players. That's why they're here. I also know slumping is part of baseball. What's surprising is sometimes when it lasts awhile, for really good players when it lasts awhile."
"Whoever your boss is, or your bosses are, they have 20 percent of their job that they just don't like."
"Once you thrust yourself out there in the public domain, it's really hard to retreat, to say no or reclaim that certain part of your life as private."
"It's hypocritical to say when things are going well, 'Interview me. Ask me how great I am. Ask me about family and personal life.' At some point later, when someone wants information and you want to draw the line, how do you do that?"
"Be intentional about the spaces you create but not at the cost of compromising other elements."
"When I was writing or competing in individual sports, it felt unfulfilling and lonely. When I was able to find a group of people I believed in and liked, that all worked in pursuit of a common goal, it felt incredibly rewarding."
"To win the World Series, you have to be able to do a lot of things well."
"Watching the Dodgers perform at a really high level is a nice reminder to us as to how high the bar is."
"You have years where most things go your way, and you have years where more things than usual seem like a challenge."
"There are certainly times when baseball is much more than bread and circus, times when baseball resonates deeply and meaningfully with many, many people, and times when a game that is built around overcoming failure can teach us all a few important lessons."
