"Berkshire is my painting, so it should look the way I want it to when it's done."

Warren Buffett sounds an alarm in his letter to shareholders: The party is over. It's a certainty that insurance-industry profit margins, including ours, will fall significantly in 2008. Prices are down, and exposures inexorably rise. Even if the US has its third consecutive catastrophe-light year, industry profit margins will probably shrink by four percentage points or so. If the winds roar or the earth trembles, results could be far worse. So be prepared for lower insurance earnings during the next few years.

His children will not inherit a significant proportion of his wealth. Buffettt says, "I want to give my kids just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing nothing".

A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.

I always knew I was going to be rich. I don't think I ever doubted it for a minute.

I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here.

I buy expensive suits. They just look cheap on me.

I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.

If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.

It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.

Image: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (L) and Warren Buffett, participate in a panel discussion at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.