'Big Short' author Michael Lewis says Wall Street has become boring, Vanguard is more disruptive than Robinhood, and Elon Musk probably wants a different biographer than him. Here are his 9 best quotes from a new interview.

• "The Big Short" author Michael Lewis told DealBook that Wall Street culture is less colorful today.
• Vanguard is more disruptive than Robinhood, and the trading app offers casino-like fun, Lewis said.

Michael Lewis, the author of multiple books about Wall Street, outlined how technology has changed trading floors, called Vanguard more disruptive than Robinhood, and discussed the possibility of writing Elon Musk's biography in a recent interview.

Lewis, whose books have inspired Oscar-nominated movies including "The Big Short," told The New York Times' DealBook he doesn't think today's Wall Street characters are as colorful as those in the 1980s.

Here are 9 of Lewis' best quotes from the interview, edited for length and clarity:

1. "The corporate culture was almost anything goes and there was a delight in that, especially for someone writing about it. Now it's all been kind of flattened into this gray." (He was describing how Wall Street culture has changed since the publication of his first book, 'Liar's Poker,' in 1989.)

2. "The sound and the smell and the kind of taste of the place seems to have changed. I've walked onto a big hedge fund trading floor, and they're completely silent. They're just guys and women staring at screens and doing things with their computers."

3. "They were willing to pay me probably millions of dollars, but certainly hundreds of thousands, to dish out financial advice when I certainly didn't know what you should be doing with your money." (He was reflecting on his experience working as a bond salesman at the now-defunct investment firm Salomon Brothers in the 1980s.)

4. "Look, if Elon Musk invited me to ride shotgun with him, of course I would. I just don't think he would. I don't think I'm the writer he has in mind." (Lewis was discussing whether he would write a biography of the Tesla boss. "Steve Jobs" author Walter Isaacson is working on a Musk biography.)

5. "I can't say I don't like Wall Street people. I love some of them. But I think the system is perpetually screwed up, and I don't quite understand why, except that people get themselves in positions of influence and they're able to make money from a screwed-up system."

6. "My impression is that technology has made the characters somehow a little less rich. It's more like there's a flatness to it that technology has encouraged." (He was describing how Wall Street's characters today are less colorful than some of the ones he's written about.)

7. "I understand it's fun if you're treating it like a casino. It is not a very healthy one. I think of Vanguard as being more useful, disruptive than Robinhood, teaching people not to do that." (Lewis was suggesting that Robinhood encourages gambling and speculating, while Vanguard supports long-term investing).

8. "I should have anticipated that mainly what a young person was going to get from this was how much fun Wall Street was." (He was reflecting on how 'Liar's Poker' became a guide to how the big financial institutions operate.)

9. "No boss on Wall Street was making their employees read 'Liar's Poker' in 1990. It was like, you're not supposed to read that. Now it's become a kind of weird manual."

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