Quotes from Eric Weiner

Someone like Mozart moves from Salzburg to Vienna, where all of the sudden he finds this musical city that is not only asking for music, it's demanding music of him.

There's no one on the island telling them they're not good enough, so they just go ahead and sing and paint and write.

Happiness is not a noun or a verb. It's a conjunction. Connective tissue.

In other words, where we are is vital to who we are.

I've always been a big believer in the power of place. I believe that where we are affects who we are when it comes to happiness, spirituality, economics and creative genius.

I would love to think there is a direct relationship between coffee and genius, but they've done studies, and if anything, caffeine probably makes you a little less creative.

If you walk into a coffee shop in 1903 Vienna, you might find at the same table the artist Gustav Klimt, Sigmund Freud, Leon Trotsky and possibly Adolf Hitler, who lived in Vienna at the same time.

Reason cannot account for those moments in life that "bewilder the intellect yet utterly quiet the heart," as G.K. Chesterton observed.

Genius is not only a what or a who, it is a where. It is grounded in a place every single time.

A Mozart symphony is very much like a Pixar movie - in the sense that Pixar movies are hugely successful because they operate on several levels at the same time.

We help other people because we can, or because it makes us feel good, not because we're counting on some future payback. There is a word for this; love.

We can't love a place or a person if we always have one foot out the door.

I'm interested in genius the way a hungry man is interested in Philadelphia cheesesteaks. I want something. I want a piece of it.

Some places are like family. They annoy us to no end, especially during the holidays, but we keep coming back for more because we know, deep in our hearts, that our destinies are intertwined.