My top 10 highlights from the book:

1. He's a truck driver who directed the highest-grossing movie of all time and then ditched Hollywood to spend a decade of his life exploring the deep ocean and the heights of science.

2. It was plain to see that Cameron was a man on his own mission.

3. A man who seemed interested only in doing things that were hard.

4. Cameron was already taking charge. He seems constitutionally incapable of doing otherwise.

5. Cameron would stalk the library at the University of Southern California, photocopying graduate student theses on esoteric filmmaking subjects. For the cost of a couple hundred dollars in photocopying, he essentially put himself through a graduate course in visual effects at the top film school in the country without ever meeting a single professor.

6. The groupthink of his peers baffled him.

7. I like doing things I know others can't.

8. There wasn't time for doubt. We didn't know the twenty-seven reasons why we shouldn't be able to do exactly what we were in the process of doing.

9. They go, Don't you read the papers? Don't you watch TV? Cameron confessed that he didn't.

10. I'm an explorer at heart, a filmmaker by trade.

Listen to the Founders episode #311 James Cameron