Justine Musk

“Attention isn't really earned. It's invoked; it's manipulated. It can be heady and make you feel powerful, but it isn't something you accomplish; you get it - or you don't.”

“I've noticed that women who pursue recognition rather than attention have a different relationship with aging. They're not dropping tens of thousands of dollars on plastic surgery. When they have to choose between looking older - or looking odd - they'll go with older.”

“Sometimes it is a way of controlling others, including family members, because you don't know how to connect to them in any other way. Money can also serve as a scorecard to indicate how well you are doing, the impact you are having, if you are winning.”

“I have struggled with self-esteem issues since my teens, but it's clear in my first long-ago diary that I didn't start out that way. I acquired my low self-esteem. I learned it.”

“One of the many qualities that separate self-made billionaires from the rest of us is their ability to ask the right questions.”

“'Obsession' has a bad rap.”

“Keep your body sharp to keep your mind sharp.”

“I don't believe that we - and this holds true for both genders - have as many choices as we seem to like to think.”

“Extreme people combine brilliance and talent with an insane work ethic.”

“I've learned to separate my fears from my intuition and, at times, to follow my intuition through the fear.”

“We live in a culture that celebrates determination and hard work, but understand, these are the qualities that keep you in the game after most everybody else has left - or until somebody bigger and stronger picks you up and hurls you back out to sea.”

“You have to have a spirit of courage and adventure, or else you're going to find it tough to get up in the morning sometimes.”

“I had turned into a trophy wife - and I sucked at it. I wasn't detail-oriented enough to maintain a perfect house or be a perfect hostess. I could no longer hide my boredom when the men talked and the women smiled and listened. I wasn't interested in Botox or makeup or reducing the appearance of the scars from my C-sections.”

“As a girlchild in the early-to-mid 1980s, I wasn't expected to like math. So I stopped liking math. As a young woman, I wasn't expected to have high self-esteem.”

“I love how feminism is often blamed for giving women too many choices. Like this is a bad thing.”

“In the late spring of 2008, my wealthy entrepreneurial husband, Elon Musk, the father of my five young sons, filed for divorce. Six weeks later, he texted me to say he was engaged to a gorgeous British actress in her early 20s who had moved to Los Angeles to be with him.”

“The world gives you money in exchange for something it perceives to be of equal or greater value: something that transforms an aspect of the culture, reworks a familiar story or introduces a new one, alters the way people think about the category and make use of it in daily life.”

“Extreme success results from an extreme personality and comes at the cost of many other things.”

“Why strive to be 'elite'? Because it infuses your life with purpose and meaning that does not depend on anyone or anything that can ever be taken away from you.”

“Recognition happens when you see yourself from the inside-out: as someone who can make an impact on the world instead of navigating the impact the world has on you.”